When Kifer joined DHL Americas as vice president of program management in 2001, one of his first tasks was getting control of project portfolio activities. He created an inventory, put that into a master project schedule, gained an understanding of the resource requirements of all the projects, then did a reconciliation of the projects and reduced the schedule to a manageable level.

Creating a project portfolio inventory can be painstaking but is well worth the effort. For many companies, it may be their first holistic view of the entire IT portfolio and any redundancies. A good inventory is the foundation for developing the projects that best meet strategic objectives.

Evaluate: Identify Projects That Match Strategic Objectives

The next steps involve establishing a portfolio process. The heads of business units, in conjunction with the senior IT leaders in each of those units, compile a list of projects during the annual planning cycle and support them with good business cases that show estimated costs, ROI, business benefit and risk assessment. The leadership team vets those projects and sifts out the ones with questionable business value. At Eli Lilly, a senior business ownership council comprising the information officer and senior business leaders in each business unit takes on this role.

Next, a senior-level IT steering committee made up of business unit heads, IT leaders and perhaps other senior executives meets to review the project proposals; a good governance structure is central to making this work. "Portfolio management without governance is an empty concept," says Howard A. Rubin, executive vice president at Meta Group. Conversely, putting portfolio management in place can force companies with weak governance structures to improve them.

One of the core criteria for which projects get funded is how closely a project meets a company's strategic objectives for the upcoming year. At clinical diagnostics company Dade Behring, an executive leadership team, which includes the CEO, creates five strategic initiatives, such as CRMCRM or organizational excellence. The IT governance council, made up of business leaders and senior IT leaders, then evaluates projects based on how well they map against those initiatives. "We also try to assess risk from a technology point of view, a change-management point of view, the number of people that a project will impact and whether it will involve huge reengineering," says Dave Edelstein, CIO and senior vice president of regulatory affairs, quality systems, and health, safety and environment. Using methodology borrowed from the product development group (modified for IS, but keeping terminology that business executives are familiar with), projects are placed "above the line" - those that should be funded - or "below the line" - those that shouldn't. Alles zu CRM auf CIO.de