IT Portfolio Management Step-by-Step: Unlocking the Business Value of Technology

5.1. INTRODUCTION

Overview

There is no single best practice for building or improving the IT portfolio. ITportfolio management is a fluid and dynamic process of trying to create and maintain the perfect homeostasis between optimizing capacity and demand against a series of criteria and constraints whereby:

• New discovery initiatives and projects are evaluated, selected, and prioritized

• Priorities of active projects are constantly being updated and evaluated

• Existing assets may be maintained, reengineered, phased out, or repositioned^[]

  ^[] Edmund M. Ziegler, ISBM Net Product Development Consortium Meeting, DuPont Consulting Solutions, March 2001.

Building and maintaining the IT portfolio is a balancing act that is both an art and a science. It is an art due to the nonnumeric, subjective, qualitative, intangible, anduncertain variables factored into evaluating and assessing IT investments and the IT portfolio. It is a science due to the numeric, objective, quantitative, tangible, and reliable information and data that are also used for evaluation and assessment. The importance and criticality, and thus the weighting and priority, of the art and thescience vary by company and by industry. In addition, rankings of these factors are constantly being adjusted due to continuous internal and external changes and events. There are three critical factors to keep in mind throughout this chapter:

1. The IT portfolio management process and framework do not make decisions—people do!

2. All models shown ...