ITIL and Portfolio Management

ITIL and Portfolio Management are tools with clear benefits; among them a holistic view of IT projects across the enterprise and the alignment of IT with corporate strategy. ITIL and Portfolio Management can help you gain control of your IT projects and deliver meaningful value to the business. ITIL and Portfolio Management take a holistic view of a company's overall IT strategy. Both IT and business leaders vet project proposals by matching them with the company's strategic objectives. The IT portfolio is managed like a financial portfolio; riskier strategic investments (high-growth stocks) are balanced with more conservative investments (cash funds), and the mix is constantly monitored to assess which projects are on track, which need help and which should be shut down.

Why You Need ITIL and Portfolio Management: Think about how IT investments are managed in your company; do any of the following scenarios rings true? Million-dollar projects, which may or may not match the company's objectives, are awarded to business units headed by the squeakiest executives; weak IT governance structures mean that business executives don't have clear ideas of what they're approving and why; the CIO ends up selling projects that should be generated and sold by line-of-business heads; the company doesn't build good business cases for IT projects or it doesn't do them at all; and there are redundant projects.

A strong ITIL and Portfolio Management program can turn all that around and do the following:

• Maximize value of IT investments while minimizing the risk
• Improve communication and alignment between IS and business leaders
• Encourage business leaders to think "team," not "me," and to take responsibility for projects
• Allow planners to schedule resources more efficiently
• Reduce the number of redundant projects and make it easier to kill projects

ITIL and Portfolio Management organizes a series of projects into a single portfolio consisting of reports that capture project objectives, costs, timelines, accomplishments, resources, risks and other critical factors.

ITIL and Portfolio Management is used to select a portfolio of new product development projects to achieve the following goals:

• Maximize the profitability or value of the portfolio
• Provide balance
• Support the strategy of the enterprise

ITIL and Portfolio Management is the responsibility of the senior management team of an organization or business unit. This team, which might be called the Product Committee, meets regularly to manage the product pipeline and make decisions about the product portfolio. Often, this is the same group that conducts the stage-gate reviews in the organization.