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Category Archives: Project Portfolios
Portfolio classes for the greater recession
In an economy that doesn’t move forward easily if at all, the traditional classes in portfolio planning aren’t enough. A Governing Board needs to establish a mix designed to deal with a long period of malaise. That would be now, … Continue reading
The kill decision
Probably the hardest decision to make in any organisation is the decision to kill a project that’s underway. Time, effort and money has been sunk into it. There are expectations of its completion — successful completion is preferred, but, when … Continue reading
The core governance decisions
IT governance is a noxious task, yet leaving it undone — or asking the Chief Information Officer to bear the load alone — is a recipe for trouble. I have written at length about the Governance Board, and how it … Continue reading
Digging into deployment
You can’t get the promised return on investment (ROI) if people don’t use the features that supposedly generate that return. That’s why spending time after deployment understanding usage, and making changes to get the benefits, matters so much. It’s one … Continue reading
Getting the cart before the horse
We all know the picture of the person who hitches the cart up in front of the horse. It’s good for a laugh: how’s he going to get anywhere? In IT, we have a annoying tendency, though, to do just … Continue reading
Real ROI vs ROI on Paper
Return on Investment (ROI) is the most common metric used to stack-rank projects for funding and the “go” decision. Unfortunately, for most organizations, the ROI promised is seldom what’s delivered. Stale Assumptions Let’s begin with a fact of organizational life. … Continue reading
Permanent project teams cost more
Many solution development organizations within IT still have permanent teams in place, either for maintenance purposes or because prior attempts to create tool-based flexible centres did not produce the expected results. The strength claimed for these teams is that they … Continue reading
Posted in Development, Governance, Project Portfolios
Tagged creation of commitment, permanent teams, pseudo-projects
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Common Needs and Differentiation
There are two different kinds of need for information technology in the typical enterprise. Unfortunately, most of us have implemented three kinds — and that is the source of more value destruction than any other thing we do in IT. … Continue reading
Governing the IT Value Chain
One of the key tasks of the Governance Board is to ensure that appropriate policies for the IT Value Chain are put into effect — and used. These are designed to ensure a steady flow of value-enhancing ideas into the … Continue reading
The value of governing by principles
Governance Boards have established themselves, even this early in their creation, as a vehicle that keeps the various parts of the enterprise making decisions with an enterprise-wide perspective about IT investment. One of the key reasons this is so is … Continue reading
Posted in Asset Portfolios, Governance, Project Portfolios
Tagged Governance Board, investment decisions, principles
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Getting Value from IT 