IT Portfolio Management is a process to manage large numbers of projects and other elements in Information Technology (IT) capability.
Synonyms:
IT PPM
,
IT Project Portfolio Management
,
Portfolio Management for IT
See Also:
New Product Portfolio Management
IT Portfolio Management typically covers some of all of the following - live projects, planned initiatives, applications and IT services.
IT portfolio management originally focused mostly on the selection, prioritization and management of projects. The extent of IT Portfolio Management solutions has now extended to cover ongoing business elements such as applications, processes, maintenance and support. The relationships between these various project, business and technology elements typically need to be managed by a specialist software application, such as GenSight.
The underlying goals of IT portfolio management are to maximize the return from constrained resources, within an acceptable level of risk. Specifically, this means that a disciplined mechanism must be in place to assess and approve investment decisions, and then to track and manage the benefit realization.
The concepts used in IT portfolio management have their roots in financial portfolio management. However, there are many differences. Firstly, IT investments typically aim to address a range of strategic goals, as opposed to a singular focus on financial return. Secondly, IT projects are not as easily traded as financial investments - put another way there are typically large costs incurred to close down one project and switch resources to another. Thirdly, projects typically demand a complex and usually constrained mix of resources, probably requiring different skills or roles to be filled.
Organizations at a lower level of process maturity in IT portfolio management will do best to focus on projects initially, and to progressively build their capability to cover other related elements.
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