What It Is: IT Portfolio Management is the process whereby technology investments are prioritized, managed, and governed (from demand management through delivery) on an ongoing basis, in the interest of enabling business strategy, maximizing return, minimizing risk, and providing security and compliance.
Why It Matters: Organizations don’t have unlimited capacity in terms of people, funding, ability to adopt new solutions, etc. and ensuring investments is essential to maximizing value in relation to spend
Overall Concepts
- Portfolio management is about leadership and business partnership first, and process second
- Portfolio reviews should produce schedule changes, delivery engagement, or risk management
- Understanding total cost of ownership and effective resource management are critical input
- Performing named resource planning versus role-based is important for critical roles
Transparency and Governance
- Provide visibility into demand, scope, value, complexity, critical resource needs
- Monitor ongoing delivery to proactively address risk and maintain and adjust release calendar
- Evaluate and report on value realization, adjust metrics on new demand to improve efficacy
Portfolio Allocation
- Typically includes: Innovation, Business Projects, Modernization, Security, Compliance, Operate
- Prioritization model balance local versus global efforts, short- and long-term value
Release Management
- Have a structured release approach with deployment windows to reduce risk and ease adoption
- Frontload the first half of the year to avoid excess resource availability issues near the holidays
- Separate major and minor releases, maintenance, and experiments into defined release slots
Change Management
- Manage a global view of deployments to avoid schedule conflicts and manage end user change
- Maintain an end-user view of technology and consider integration to avoid being project-centric
Tools
- Portfolio management tools should enable and support the process, never become the focus
- Gather only critical data that is actionable, or it is administrative overhead and likely wasteful
For Additional Information: Thoughts on Portfolio Management, Fast and Cheap, Isn’t Good, Creating Value Through Strategy, Optimizing the Value of IT, On Managing Customer Relationships
Excellence doesn’t happen by accident. Courageous leadership is essential.
Put value creation first, be disciplined, but nimble.
Want to discuss more? Please send me a message. I’m happy to explore with you.
-CJG 12/10/2025
Organized Chaos 