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

5.5. STAGE 4: ASSESSING

This stage is generally where the real fun begins. All of the previous efforts come together to generate the ah-ha factor. The actual performance of the portfolio is compared with the expected performance. Guess what? They almost never match, which is where the ah-ha factor comes in. It is common to identify 25% waste in project portfolios during the assessment and to discover that IT assets are being utilized at only half of their practical capacity.

Exhibit 5.29 outlines the specific tasks and activities involved in developing the assessing stage. The critical activities of the tasks shown in Exhibit 5.29 that are addressed in this section include:

• Monitoring for triggering events: looking at internal and external events and their impacts on the portfolio

• Measuring the portfolio: quantifying the risks and returns of the portfolio contents

  Figure 5.29. ASSESSING STAGE TASKS

  

• Comparing measures against targets: analyzing expected and actual results of the portfolio to identify areas where balancing should occur

If tools, investment attributes, and views were appropriately selected and applied, this stage can be relatively easy. It will get tripped up if key data elements were not collected, inappropriate tools were selected, or views were not chosen well.

The major players in this stage are the portfolio team and manager, the metrics expert(s), and the key ...