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At its most basic level, IT portfolio management serves as an excellent communications vehicle about business and IT priorities, and how to keep these aligned. Once this practice has taken hold, it can be a driver of IT process improvement and governance alike. We have seen that implementing an IT portfolio management system forces us to ask the following key questions:

• What are we spending our available resources on now? (This gives some indication of priority, and a fairly good indication of resource allocation.)


• Who are we and what are we trying to accomplish? (This indicates the level of business-IT alignment.)


• What are the investments that will provide the greatest leverage? (This is where the "rubber hits the road" in using agreed measurements and metrics of project value and balancing this with good business and technology judgment and leadership.)


• How many investments can we successfully take on at a given time? (This indicates the level of discipline of resource planning and budgeting.)


• How will these investments interact? (This indicates the level of maturity of the portfolio risk management process.)

We have seen that the IT portfolio management process can be understood in the following ten points:

1. Understanding why it is needed and building a business case.

2. Identifying champions and forming governance.

3. Collecting data.

4. Documenting the current state of projects and work streams.

5. Measuring value and prioritizing portfolio components.

6. Considering risk.

7. Initiating projects.

8. Selecting software tools.

9. Reviewing, monitoring, and rebalancing of projects.

10. Improving process and governance.

As with any process improvement initiative, challenges will arise during each of these stages which the organization must prepare to meet. And as with other types of initiatives, organizations do not always get it right the first time, but through iteration, learning, and improved communications, improvement is gradual yet lasting.

This article was originally published by Info-Tech Research Group. Copyright (c) 1998-2008 Info-Tech Research Group. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Info-Tech Research Group is a professional services firm dedicated to providing premium research and objective advice to IT managers of mid-sized enterprises. The firm's products and services combine actionable insight and relevant advice with ready-to-use tools and templates that cover the full spectrum of IT concerns. Its practical approach is designed to have a clear and measurable positive impact on your organization's bottom line. Info-Tech serves over 21,000 clients at 8,000 organizations around the world.

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