IT portfolio management

Last updated

IT portfolio management is the application of systematic management to the investments, projects and activities of enterprise Information Technology (IT) departments. Examples of IT portfolios would be planned initiatives, projects, and ongoing IT services (such as application support). The promise of IT portfolio management is the quantification of previously informal IT efforts, enabling measurement and objective evaluation of investment scenarios.

Contents

Overview

Debates exist on the best way to measure value of IT investment. As pointed out by Jeffery and Leliveld, [1] companies have spent billions of dollars on IT investments and yet the headlines of mis-spent money are not uncommon. Nicholas Carr (2003) has caused significant controversy in IT industry and academia by positioning IT as an expense similar to utilities such as electricity.

IT portfolio management started with a project-centric bias, but is evolving to include steady-state portfolio entries such as infrastructure and application maintenance. IT budgets tend not to track these efforts at a sufficient level of granularity for effective financial tracking. [2]

The concept is analogous to financial portfolio management, but there are significant differences. Financial portfolio assets typically have consistent measurement information (enabling accurate and objective comparisons), and this is at the base of the concept’s usefulness in application to IT. However, achieving such universality of measurement is going to take considerable effort in the IT industry (see, for example, Val IT). IT investments are not liquid, like stocks and bonds (although investment portfolios may also include illiquid assets), and are measured using both financial and non-financial yardsticks (for example, a balanced scorecard approach); a purely financial view is not sufficient. Finally, assets in an IT portfolio have a functional relationship to the organization, such as an inventory management system for logistics or a human resources system for tracking employees' time. This is analogous to a vertically integrated company which may own an oil field, a refinery, and retail gas stations.

IT portfolio management is distinct from IT financial management in that it has an explicitly directive, strategic goal in determining what to continue investing in versus what to divest from.

At its most mature, IT portfolio management is accomplished through the creation of three portfolios:

Information Technology portfolio management as a systematic discipline is more applicable to larger IT organizations; in smaller organizations its concerns might be generalized into IT planning and governance as a whole.

Benefits of using IT portfolio management

Jeffery and Leliveld (2004) have listed several benefits of applying IT portfolio management approach for IT investments. They argue that agility of portfolio management is its biggest advantage over investment approaches and methods. Other benefits include central oversight of budget, risk management, strategic alignment of IT investments, demand and investment management along with standardization of investment procedure, rules and plans..

Implementing IT portfolio management

Jeffery and Leliveld (2004) have pointed out a number of hurdles and success factors that CIOs might face while attempting to implement IT portfolio management approach. To overcome these hurdles, simple methods such as proposed by Pisello (2001) can be used.

       -Plan-      -        -    -            -   build      retire    -            -       -      -         Maintain 

Other implementation methods include (1) risk profile analysis (figure out what needs to be measured and what risks are associated with it), (2) Decide on the Diversification of projects, infrastructure and technologies (it is an important tool that IT portfolio management provides to judge the level of investments on the basis of how investments should be made in various elements of the portfolio), (3) Continuous Alignment with business goals (highest levels of organizations should have a buy-in in the portfolio) and (4) Continuous Improvement (lessons learned and investment adjustments).

  1. Developing and evolving IT portfolio governance and organization
  2. Assessing IT portfolio management process execution

There is no single best way to implement IT portfolio approach and therefore variety of approaches can applied. Obviously the methods are not set in stone and will need altering depending upon the individual circumstances of different organizations.

IT portfolio management vs. balanced scorecard

The biggest advantage of IT portfolio management is the agility of the investment adjustments. While balanced scorecards also emphasize the use of vision and strategy in any investment decision, oversight and control of operation budgets is not the goal. IT portfolio management allows organizations to adjust the investments based upon the feedback mechanism built into the IT portfolio management.

History

The first mention of the portfolio concept as related to IT was from Richard Nolan in 1973: "investments in developing computer applications can be thought of as a portfolio of computer applications." [3]

Further mention is found in Gibson and Nolan's Managing the Four Stages of EDP Growth in 1973. [4] Gibson and Nolan proposed that IT advances in observable stages driven by four "growth processes" of which the Applications Portfolio was key. Their concepts were operationalized at Nolan, Norton & Co. with measures of application coverage of business functions, applications functional and technical qualities, applications age and spending.

McFarlan [5] proposed a different portfolio management approach to IT assets and investments. Further contributions have been made by Weill and Broadbent, [6] Aitken, [7] Kaplan, [8] and Benson, Bugnitz, and Walton. [9] The ITIL version 2 Business Perspective [10] and Application Management [11] volumes and the ITIL v3 Service Strategy volume also cover it in depth.

Various vendors have offerings explicitly branded as "IT Portfolio Management" solutions.

ISACA's Val IT framework is perhaps the first attempt at standardization of IT portfolio management principles.

In peer-reviewed research, Christopher Verhoef has found that IT portfolios statistically behave more akin to biological populations than financial portfolios. [12] Verhoef was general chair of the first convening of the new IEEE conference, "IEEE Equity," March 2007, which focuses on "quantitative methods for measuring, predicting, and understanding the relationship between IT and value."

McFarlan's IT portfolio matrix

  High   ^   |---------------------------------------------------------------|   |Strategic   | Turnaround   | Impact  |---------------------------------------------------------------| of IS/IT |Critical to achieving  |May be critical to   | applications |future business strategy. |achieving future   | on future  | (Developer)  |business success  |        industry |                  | (Entrepreneur)  | competitiveness |Central Planning  |    |   |    |Leading Edge/Free Market |   |---------------------------------------------------------------|   |Critical to existing business  |Valuable but not critical |   |operations   |to success   |   | (Controller)  | (Caretaker)  |   |    |    |   |Monopoly   |  Scarce Resource  |   |_______________________________| ______________________________|   |Factory          | Support   |   |<---------------------------------------------------------------Low   High         Value to the business of existing applications. 

Freeware and open source tools

MappIT is a free tool used to map and analyze IT SEC Portfolio assets (systems, business processes, infrastructure, people, skills, roles, organization, spending...) and their lifecycle. It was launched in its first version in February 2012.

The PfM² Portfolio Management Methodology is an open source Portfolio Management Methodology published by the PM² Foundation under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike 4.0 International licence. It is based on, and expands the European Commission's PM² Methodological Framework, and presents an effective standalone portfolio management methodology. The PfM² Guide encapsulates globally accepted best practices from other methods and standards and provides them in the form of guidelines that are lean, user-centric and that effectively communicate the PfM² Model to a broad and varied audience.

Relationship to other IT disciplines

IT portfolio management is an enabling technique for the objectives of IT Governance. It is related to both IT Service Management and Enterprise Architecture, and is seen as a bridge between the two. ITIL v3 calls for Service Portfolio Management which appears to be functionally equivalent. [13]

Difference between projects, programs and portfolios

A project is managed with a clear end date in mind, and according to a set scope and budget. It has a single easily definable tangible output. E.g. a list of deliverables, a new system or an improved process. The Management of Portfolios (MoP) standard of AXELOS defines a project as "... a temporary organization, usually existing for a much shorter time than a programme, which will deliver one or more outputs in accordance with a specific business case. A particular project may or may not be part of a programme."

A program is a collection of two or more projects sharing a common goal. Program managers control dependencies and allocate resources across projects. The MoP and Management of Successful Programmes (MSP) standards define a programme as "... a temporary, flexible organization created to coordinate, direct and oversee the implementation of a set of related projects and activities in order to deliver outcomes and benefits related to the organizations's strategic objectives. A programme is likely to have a life that spans several years."

A portfolio is a group of related initiatives, projects and/or programs that attain wide reaching benefits and impact. MoP definition: "An organization's portfolio is the totality of its investment (or segment therof) in the changes required to achieve its strategic objectives. ...focus is on the change initiatives that are delivered via formalized project and programme management methodologies."

See also

Related Research Articles

Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. The primary constraints are scope, time, and budget. The secondary challenge is to optimize the allocation of necessary inputs and apply them to meet pre-defined objectives.

Information technology service management (ITSM) are the activities performed by an organization to design, build, deliver, operate and control information technology (IT) services offered to customers.

Enterprise Project Management, in broad terms, is the field of organizational development that supports organizations in managing integrally and adapting themselves to the changes of a transformation. Enterprise Project Management is a way of thinking, communicating and working, supported by an information system, that organizes enterprise's resources in a direct relationship to the leadership's vision and the mission, strategy, goals and objectives that move the organization forward. Simply put, EPM provides a 360 degree view of the organization's collective efforts.

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a business function concerned with the structures and behaviours of a business, especially business roles and processes that create and use business data. The international definition according to the Federation of Enterprise Architecture Professional Organizations is "a well-defined practice for conducting enterprise analysis, design, planning, and implementation, using a comprehensive approach at all times, for the successful development and execution of strategy. Enterprise architecture applies architecture principles and practices to guide organizations through the business, information, process, and technology changes necessary to execute their strategies. These practices utilize the various aspects of an enterprise to identify, motivate, and achieve these changes."

A federal enterprise architecture framework (FEAF) is the U.S. reference enterprise architecture of a federal government. It provides a common approach for the integration of strategic, business and technology management as part of organization design and performance improvement.

Project portfolio management (PPM) is the centralized management of the processes, methods, and technologies used by project managers and project management offices (PMOs) to analyze and collectively manage current or proposed projects based on numerous key characteristics. The objectives of PPM are to determine the optimal resource mix for delivery and to schedule activities to best achieve an organization’s operational and financial goals, while honouring constraints imposed by customers, strategic objectives, or external real-world factors. Standards for Portfolio Management include Project Management Institute's framework for project portfolio management, Management of Portfolios by Office of Government Commerce and the PfM² Portfolio Management Methodology by the PM² Foundation.

Intellectual property assets such as patents are the core of many organizations and transactions related to technology. Licenses and assignments of intellectual property rights are common operations in the technology markets, as well as the use of these types of assets as loan security. These uses give rise to the growing importance of financial valuation of intellectual property, since knowing the economic value of patents is a critical factor in order to define their trading conditions.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to business management:

Asset management is a systematic approach to the governance and realization of all value for which a group or entity is responsible. It may apply both to tangible assets and to intangible assets. Asset management is a systematic process of developing, operating, maintaining, upgrading, and disposing of assets in the most cost-effective manner.

IT Application Portfolio Management (APM) is a practice that has emerged in mid to large-size information technology (IT) organizations since the mid-1990s. Application Portfolio Management attempts to use the lessons of financial portfolio management to justify and measure the financial benefits of each application in comparison to the costs of the application's maintenance and operations.

Total cost management (TCM) is the name given by AACE International to a process for applying the skills and knowledge of cost engineering. It is also the first integrated process or methodology for portfolio, program and project management. It was initially conceived by Thomas D. Fromm and John Nunnemaker of Perkins & Will, architects, in 1990 to apply to the design of the University of Illinois Life and Science Building and was presented as a concept to the Society of University and College Planners (SCUP) the following year. AACE first introduced the concept in the 1990s and published the full presentation of the process in the "Total Cost Management Framework" in 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enterprise life cycle</span> Process of changing an enterprise over time

Enterprise life cycle (ELC) in enterprise architecture is the dynamic, iterative process of changing the enterprise over time by incorporating new business processes, new technology, and new capabilities, as well as maintenance, disposition and disposal of existing elements of the enterprise.

Business systems planning (BSP) is a method of analyzing, defining and designing the information architecture of organizations. It was introduced by IBM for internal use only in 1981, although initial work on BSP began during the early 1970s. BSP was later sold to organizations. It is a complex method dealing with interconnected data, processes, strategies, aims and organizational departments.

IT cost transparency is a category of information technology management software and systems that enables enterprise IT organizations to model and track the total cost to deliver and maintain the IT Services they provide to the business. It is increasingly a task of management accounting. IT cost transparency solutions can integrate financial information such as labor costs, software licensing costs, hardware acquisition and depreciation, data center facilities charges from general ledger systems and combine this with operational data from ticketing, monitoring, asset management and project portfolio management systems to provide a single, integrated view of IT costs by service, department, GL line item and project. In addition to tracking cost elements, IT cost transparency may track utilization, usage and operational performance metrics in order to provide a measure of value or return on investment (ROI). Costs, budgets, performance metrics and changes to data points are tracked over time to identify trends and the impact of changes to underlying cost drivers in order to help managers address the key drivers in escalating IT costs and improve planning.

Lean IT is the extension of lean manufacturing and lean services principles to the development and management of information technology (IT) products and services. Its central concern, applied in the context of IT, is the elimination of waste, where waste is work that adds no value to a product or service.

Enterprise data planning is the starting point for enterprise wide change. It states the destination and describes how you will get there. It defines benefits, costs and potential risks. It provides measures to be used along the way to judge progress and adjust the journey according to changing circumstances.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Infrastructure asset management</span> Maintenance of public infrastructure assets

Infrastructure asset management is the integrated, multidisciplinary set of strategies in sustaining public infrastructure assets such as water treatment facilities, sewer lines, roads, utility grids, bridges, and railways. Generally, the process focuses on the later stages of a facility's life cycle, specifically maintenance, rehabilitation, and replacement. Asset management specifically uses software tools to organize and implement these strategies with the fundamental goal to preserve and extend the service life of long-term infrastructure assets which are vital underlying components in maintaining the quality of life in society and efficiency in the economy. In the 21st century, climate change adaptation has become an important part of infrastructure asset management competence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IT risk management</span>

IT risk management is the application of risk management methods to information technology in order to manage IT risk, i.e.:

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to project management:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Service governance</span>

Service governance is a means of achieving good corporate governance through managing internal corporate services across and throughout an enterprise. It engages stakeholders and delivery channels for the purpose of effectively managing risk, as well as driving the intended business value with a focus on how decisions are made and enforced in a dynamic business environment.

References

  1. Jeffery, M., & Leliveld, I. (2004). Best Practices in IT Portfolio Management. MIT Sloan Management Review. 45 (3), 41. http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/articles/2004/spring/45309/best-practices-in-it-portfolio-management
  2. Kaplan, J. D. (2005). Strategic IT portfolio support, which consume the bulk of IT spending. The challenge for including application maintenance and suppofolio management : governing enterprise transformation. United States, Pittiglio Rabin Todd & McGrath Inc.
  3. Nolan, Richard (1973). "Plight of the EDP Manager." Harvard Business Review, May–June 1973.
  4. Managing the Four Stages of EDP Growth Publication date: Jan 01, 1974. Prod. #: 74104-PDF-ENG
  5. McFarlan, F. W. (1981). "Portfolio approach to information systems." Harvard Business Review (September–October 1981): 142-150
  6. Weill, P. and Broadbent, M. (1998). Leveraging the New Infrastructure: How Market Leaders Capitalize on Information Technology. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard Business School Press.
  7. Aitken, I. (2003). Value-driven IT management. D. Remenyi, Computer Weekly Professional Series. Oxford, Butterworth Heinemann.
  8. Kaplan, J. D. (2005). Strategic IT portfolio management : governing enterprise transformation. United States, Pittiglio Rabin Todd & McGrath Inc.
  9. Benson, R. J., T. L. Bugnitz, et al. (2004). From business strategy to IT action : right decisions for a better bottom line. Hoboken, N.J., Wiley
  10. Office of Government Commerce (2004). Business Perspective: The IS View on Delivering Services to the Business. OGC, ITIL© Managing IT Services (IT Infrastructure Library). London, The Stationery Office.
  11. Office of Government Commerce (2002). Application management. OGC, ITIL© Managing IT Services (IT Infrastructure Library). London, The Stationery Office.
  12. Verhoef, Christopher, "Quantitative IT portfolio management," Science of Computer Programming , Volume 45, Issue 1, pages 1–96 (October 2002).
  13. Gallacher, Liz and Morris, Helen (2012). "ITIL Foundation Exam, Study Guide." John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Further reading