It Success Through Ppm

IT Success

through

Project Portfolio

Management

IT Success

through

Project Portfolio

Management

Authored by

Christopher E. Maynard

August 31, 2012

Introduction

Because of an ever growing dependency on information and technology by businesses and a lagging economy struggling to rebound, in the last few years the Information Technology (IT) arena has been seeing an increasingly heightened focus on Project Portfolio Management (PPM). A common description of PPM is a method of managing a company’s IT-related projects in a manner similar to the way that a financial planner manages the equities, bonds and cash of a financial portfolio. Before a new item is added to the portfolio it is evaluated for risk, investment pricing and of course potential for return.

PPM is about aligning projects, technology investment funds and the associated IT resources with organizational priorities. It's about eliminating redundant projects and work that adds no business value and regaining the wasted resources. It’s about managing IT resources as a single pool and applying those resources against the projects that add the highest business value and have an acceptable business risk. When broken down into its operational processes, PPM is about estimating the value of a project, estimating the project’s associated risk, performing project selection and prioritization, and ultimately, securing project funding and resources.

PPM allows companies to deploy IT resources more selectively and makes it possible for executives to focus their IT spending on projects, technology and resources that supports the company's current business strategies. When executed properly the PPM process yields a steady flow of new projects that continually add value to the business in terms of both top-line and bottom-line growth.

With so many vendors successfully offering PPM software, and thousands of companies touting the benefits of deploying a PPM discipline in their...