IT Portfolio Management
An overview discussing the theory of Portfolio Management as it applies to a firm’s Information Technology needs and available resources.
Sebastian Gawenda
12/3/2008
Table of Contents
Overview…………………………………………………………………………...3
IT Portfolio Management…………………………………………………………..5
The Three Prongs of IT Portfolio Management……………………………………9
Application Portfolio Management……………………………………..9
Project Portfolio Management………………………………………….9
Resource Portfolio Management………………………………………10
IT Portfolio Management in Practice
State Farm Insurance Companies……………………………………...11
Motorola Corporation...……………………………………………….13
Alternatives………………………………………………………………………..15
Bibliography………………………………………………………………………16
Overview
Portfolio Management on its own is not a novel idea. It has existed for a long time in the financial services industry. There the idea is quite simple and directly relates to the goal of IT Portfolio Management. The idea of portfolio management is to balance the risks of investing with finite resources while also producing the highest yields possible. It can be difficult to consider the IT world in the same way as that of the financial world; after all, there are no stocks, bonds, or currencies.
The main idea of portfolio management to take away from financial services is that of balancing projects with one another. That is what portfolio management as applied to financial services focuses on. Some money should be invested in projects that have a relatively low level of risk associated with them, those where the outcomes are fairly assured. While these projects will typically be ones where the level of measureable return is fairly low, their level of assurance in providing those results is what makes them attractive. Further, a certain level of higher risk projects should also be undertaken to provide for a way in which the firm is able to grow. This certain level is dependent on the maturity level of the firm. It may be more focused on growth than a firm which has been in the industry for several decades.
IT Portfolio Management
As previously discussed, IT Portfolio Management really focuses on utilizing current resources in such a way as to derive maximum value through the ongoing evaluation, optimization, and selection of projects while cutting down on redundancies whenever possible (See Figure 1.)
What the focus of the IT Portfolio is going to be is decided just as it would be in the financial services industry. There the goals of the client would be reflected in the investment strategy and decisions of the portfolio. Similarly, the mission and overall goals of the company will be the key driving factors behind the project selection process for the company. In a research report published in September of 2004, Defining IT Portfolio Management, Forrester Research, Inc also names several significant factors to be understood before the creation of the IT Portfolio’s plan.
Relevant business factors.
Because the factors being gathered here are business related, traditional analyses will suffice for this portion of the gathering. This includes information gathered from such traditional model’s as Michael Porter’s Five Forces Model, the balanced scorecard method developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton, strategy maps, and other relevant performance indicators. This business factor information is gathered to aid in understanding the functions of the business process that are most key to the successful operation of the enterprise.
Relevant IT factors.
The traditional analyses that were utilized for the previous section will not work ideally to identify the IT factors of greatest importance. These factors are generally the same across industries and include the limited nature of available resources, complexity and capability of the infrastructure, and the experience and skill of the IT administrators.
The key value proposition for the overall IT portfolio.
As discussed previously, just as different clients require different results from their portfolios; different firms will require the IT to fulfill different needs. Depending on the industry sector the company operates in, the IT capabilities will either be a primary function of the firm or most likely serve a secondary, support function.
Prioritization.
Having gathered all of the information, prioritization of the goals at this juncture is appropriate. A preliminary assessment is possible to begin the difficult task of deciding which projects will best suit the needs of the organization, and delaying those that are redundant and don’t provide a benefit that is in line with the organizational strategy. A sample breakdown of possible IT projects and how they fit with the firm is presented in the illustrations below (Figures 3 and 4.)
The Three Prongs of IT Portfolio Management
The IT Portfolio Management process is composed of three prongs that work uniformly to balance the needs of the company with the available resources. These three prongs are: Project Portfolio Management, Application Portfolio Management, and Resource Portfolio Management (IT Asset Management and Infrastructure Management).
Project Portfolio Management directs those projects that are currently under way, or are about to be underway. These are projects that still have the opportunity to be augmented, or those where it is important to manage the direction of the project. A lot of the benefits of IT Portfolio Management are derived from this stage because this is where many redundancies are reduced or eliminated.
With the categorization and classification of projects at this stage, it is much easier for companies to utilize the software and analytical tools at their disposal to make more strategically aligned decisions. Further, these projects should now have the appropriate level of resources and adequately skilled staff assigned to them.
Application Portfolio Management is the portion that focuses on creating the visible connections between current projects and the current costs and business processes connected to them. These connections lead the way for the organization to be able to arrive at future decisions with a better understanding as to how they will impact their strategy, business process, and business value.
Also due to the increase in visibility, decisions regarding the prioritization of critical applications will be easier to make because the ties of each application will be better understood. These prioritizations will also lead to cost savings that arise from the reduction in redundancies. With the ability to find critical services and process will come the capability to group the resource-draining redundant applications together and limit their drain on the firm.
IT Asset Management, otherwise known as Resource Portfolio Management, will create a similar connection to that of Application Portfolio Management, but it will build the bridge between IT’s resources and IT’s obligations. The term obligations is a broad-spectrum term that is used to encompass not only the contracted responsibilities of the IT department but also its other affiliated costs like maintenance depreciation schedules.
With a better understanding of the IT assets at hand, the company can both reduce risks and increase utilization. Digital rights protection and piracy are becoming ever increasing concerns for companies and IT Asset Management helps to alleviate those worries. Thanks to a more focused awareness of the available capital, firms are better able to track their software licensing and usage to avoid any unnecessary penalties and fines. The increased resource awareness will also aid in the ability to utilize available programs and power to their capacity. What may have appeared as a capability shortage before the evaluation may prove to be a capacity surplus afterwards.
IT Portfolio Management in Practice
State Farm Insurance Companies
State Farm Insurance Company is one of many firms that practice IT Portfolio Management. It is incredibly important for it to systematically manage and utilize its technological resources in a coherent and logical manner due to the vast amount of information that it analyzes. State Farm manages a database that stores roughly four times the information available in the Library of Congress, the world’s largest library. With such a large amount of information on hand, control over IT must be tight to mitigate redundancies that may slow the performance of the firm. It also operates in one of the world’s largest and most extensive private networks, and provides network access not only to corporate employees but to thousands of agents across the globe.
The firm places a big emphasis on pairing the strategy and goals of the entire organization with the benefits sought from its IT portfolio. Developing and understanding its business strategy and imperatives is a first step for State Farm, one that paves the road for IT Portfolio Management. From there, the company develops projects that will lead them toward their goals and identifies opportunities where IT is able to bridge the gap from planning to performance.
State Farm also utilizes capability maturity models to a great extent. These models aid the company in understanding the positioning of their business processes so that they can better identify opportunities for their IT services. The capability models are divided into three progressively more detailed levels. The focus of the levels is investment decisions, the customer, and expense management.
Motorola Corporation
The Motorola Corporation is similarly an industry leader with vast capital at stake in daily business operations. It too must carefully balance its IT portfolio to manage risks with the need to grow and provide newer and better services to its customers. Motorola achieves this goal through the use of M-Gates.
M-Gates is a decision making framework that allows decisions and projects to be considered under a standard set of criteria. The framework has been used by both the Engineering and IT departments since its rollout in 1999. It consists of four gates: M15 – M14 High Level Business Case, M14 Request Review, M13 Detailed Business Case, M13 Business Case Review.
The M15 – M14 High-Level Business Case Gate has a focus of translating the developed business strategies into sources of IT deliverables. A general review is then conducted and a decision is made as to whether proceed with the preliminary project or to cancel it.
The M14 Request Review Gate is a junction where the governance board of the company reviews the proposal and decides if it should go forward with the project. The board considers the other initiatives that are forming at the same time and makes a decision so as to best eliminate redundancies. If the project is allowed to continue, a business case team is identified and assigned that will be responsible for the further development of the assignment.
The M13 Detailed Business Case Gate is where the majority of detail and analysis oriented work is completed. Here a detailed case or plan is structured for the project that includes all of the necessary inter and outer company document requests and approvals.
The M13 Business Case Review Gate is the final check-point. The governance body will once again deliberate over the project and decide whether it will give the necessary permission for the implementation of the project or whether it will reject the project. This is the final control before the possible commencement of the endeavor; risks and rewards as they relate to the strategy and market position of the firm weight in heavily at this gate.
Alternatives
There are alternatives to the IT Portfolio Management method, but many include the basic elements of classification, organization, and strategy alignment that are the keys to a successful IT portfolio management strategy.
The most notable of these alternatives is the Balanced Scorecard method. A performance management tool that was developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton, it too places great importance on the vision and strategy of the organization that uses it. The Balanced Scorecard exists to provide a thorough view of the business that includes not just financially originated measures, but those measures that do not provide a specific numeric benchmark.
A notable difference of the Balanced Scorecard from IT Portfolio Management is that the scorecard is best suited for single project evaluation while portfolio management is built to manage multiple projects. Portfolio management also expresses more interest in reducing possible redundancies that may exist within the portfolio, something that is not a major priority of the scorecard.
Bibliography
Datz, Tom. "Portfolio Management Done Right.". CIO.com. November 16, 2008. <http://www.cio.com/article/31864/Portfolio_Management_Done_Right>.
Gliedman, Chip. "Defining IT Portfolio Management". Forrester. Best Practices. September 29, 2004.
Handler, Robert and Maizlish, Bryan. IT Portfolio Management. Step-By-Step. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005.
Manka, Dina and Ollinger, Debbie. “IT Governance at Motorola.” Wohler’s Hall: Champaign, IL. October 1, 2008.
Steinman, Melissa. “State Farm Insurance Companies – Portfolio Management.” Wohler’s Hall: Champaign, IL. September 24, 208.