At DHL Americas, a project portfolio review board evaluates the one-page project opportunity assessment for every proposal. Membership on the board includes IS and 12 vice presidents from across all areas of the business. "Those vice presidents are not the senior vice presidents - they're the next level down, the lieutenants," Kifer says. "Portfolio management doesn't work at the senior vice president level; they don't have time to commit to portfolio management."

A good evaluation process can help companies detect overlapping project proposals up front, cut off projects with poor business cases earlier, and strengthen alignment between IS and business execs.

Prioritize: Score and Categorize Your Projects

After evaluating projects, most companies will still have more than they can actually fund. The beauty of portfolio management is that ultimately, the prioritization process will allow you to fund the projects that most closely align with your company's strategic objectives.

Ernie Nielsen, managing director of enterprise project management at Brigham Young University, is a frequent lecturer on portfolio management and a founding director of Stanford University's Advanced Project Management Program. He instituted an extremely thorough prioritization and scoring methodology at BYU.

Under his plan, projects are placed into portfolios - Nielsen thinks multiple portfolios are a good idea in many companies because they allow like projects to be pooled together. In his case, the IT department uses four: large technology projects (more than $50K), small technology projects (less than $50K), infrastructure technology projects, and one covering executive initiatives. Think of the first three as peer portfolios; the executive one is a slightly different animal. The main job of the executive portfolio management team (each portfolio has its own team) is to distribute funds appropriately to the other three.