Foreword

"Not to decide is to decide."

—Dr. Harvey Cox, The Secular City

This book, like much of the PPM work produced by Gartner Inc. over the past several years, helps take the "not" out of "not to decide." Following the guidelines the authors have clearly set forth, companies can take the initiative in obtaining clear decision criteria from management about which projects to do. The book shows how a company can put in place intentional procedures to sort through the myriad project proposals to help discern those that promise the most value to the company. In addition, the book shows how a company can optimally allocate resources to work by aligning ITs efforts and keeping them aligned. In short, it illuminates how the discipline known as PPM can help overcome the syndrome whereby random processes deliver random results to reliably add value to the company's bottom line.

You may be familiar with the usual process occurring in many companies now: a department head submits a project proposal and after a few weeks or months and after a few reminders, the project works its way to the head of the line and IT management allocates a team to it. A few months may go by before the project deliverable arrives. It may become obvious at that point that it is a duplicate to a system already in use in another department. You may then realize that this was the tenth project in three months for that department and that it may or may not support a declared company objective. In all likelihood it may have consumed scarce developer resources, forcing other projects to wait. Sound familiar?

"Not to decide is to decide." When companies don't have clear decision criteria, or defined processes to choose among proposed projects, or staff specifically allocated to map projects-to-goals, then it is no wonder that it is impossible to keep track of how much effort is spent in support of the various goals throughout the various departments. This book will enable management to sort through all the demand and to initiate and complete projects in an efficient and organized way. In this way, companies may avoid the tried-but-ineffective methods of addressing projects either in turn, or by coin toss, or based on good collegial relationships, or on a requester's political clout.

Matt Light

Research Vice President

Gartner, Inc.

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure."

—Colin Powell

Project Portfolio Management: A View from the Management Trenches will be a valuable addition to the toolkit of all portfolio managers. I really enjoyed the folksy, down to earth discussion of project portfolio management in this book. There is much wisdom shared by a diverse group of accomplished practitioners from multiple industries. The view from the trenches tells a compelling story of how the project portfolio management is actually practiced in multiple settings versus how things ought to be. My own early experiences and difficulties in implementing portfolio management as a VP of R&D made me a champion of portfolio management during my years as VP of Conferences and then President of the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA).

I realized I had achieved less-than-stellar success with project portfolio management at Rich-SeaPak in the 1990s. We did not have a clear mechanism to kill projects; as a result we had too many projects in the pipeline and no one was charged to prune the project portfolio. Decisions about projects were routinely made at a project level and not at the portfolio level. So, I missed a great opportunity to formulate and operationalize what this book refers to as strategic portfolio management at the Front End.

This book will help the reader avoid serious mistakes commonly made in the design and implementation of enterprise portfolio management systems in organizations. I wish the readers much success as they digest keys messages "from the trenches" and apply those insights to achieve stellar success in the practice of portfolio management.

Dr. Hamsa Thota

Former Vice President-Development, Rich-Sea Pak Corporation

Former Chairman and President, Product Development and Management Association

Director, New Product Institute

President, Innovation Business Development, Inc.

"Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation."

—Oscar Wilde

Or an IT strategy. Any executive who has confronted the perpetual challenge of business-IT alignment knows all too well how challenging it can be to determine which IT projects merit how much investment, or how a given project may fit in with the company's overall goals and priorities. From the data center to the business units, and certainly throughout the C-suite, discontent abounds.

So it's heartening, really, to think of that collective discontent as an essential first step toward progress. The question then becomes what constitutes the second step? This book holds a very important part of the answer. Among its virtues is that it provides a critical (and practical) context for IT decision-making that's relevant not only for those who will actually tackle IT projects, but for all the executives who play important roles in vetting and approving both specific projects and overall IT strategy.

That latter group certainly includes CFOs and other senior finance executives, who often struggle to find common ground or a common language in their discussions with IT leaders. The concept of portfolio management, however, is something many if not most of them are very familiar with. Borrowed from the investment world, it's a widely applicable technique that provides badly needed context for decision-making.

That context is nicely captured in a handful of key questions: is the company investing in the right things? How well does it execute? Can it absorb the changes certain projects will bring about? And so on. Those are not esoteric questions that require technological expertise. They are the foundation on which a company's IT strategy will be built. And they are questions that all key stakeholders within a company should address together.

Project portfolio management is not new, not even as it pertains to IT. To implement it successfully a company will probably have to make a number of changes across the organization. This book will demonstrate why that effort will pay off, and just what to expect along the way. If you know the feeling of discontent that surrounds IT project management, take that second step toward progress: read this book.

Scott Leibs

Executive Editor

CFO Magazine

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

—Albert Einstein

The challenge of realizing real business value from today's increasingly large and complex IT investments continues to be one for all enterprises. The success rate of IT projects still hovers around 30%—basically unchanged over the last 10–20 years that we have been measuring it. IT governance is gaining increasing attention among executives, business and IT management, IT professionals and IT auditors as a "solution" to this challenge. In The Information Paradox,^[] and in my work with ISACA and the IT Governance Institute (ITGI), leading the development of their Val IT" Framework,^[] we identified portfolio management as a key element of effective governance. Portfolio management is a powerful tool to support decision making around anything that is important to an enterprise, including, but certainly not limited to IT projects. The combination of portfolio management and performance management provides the "engine" of effective governance.

^[] Enterprise Value: Governance of IT Investments: The Val IT Framework 2.0, IT Governance Institute, 2008

^[] 2. The Information Paradox—Realizing the Business Benefits of Information Technology, written by John Thorp jointly with Fujitsu, first published in 1998 and revised in 2003, McGraw-Hill, Canada

Any engine needs fuel—the "governance engine" needs high-grade business cases. The seeds of success or failure are sown in the business case. As the authors state, the business case is a foundational, and essential tool for portfolio management. However, enterprises generally are not good at developing or using complete and comprehensive business cases. The current approach to business cases pretty well guarantees significant challenges, if not outright failure. A well developed and intelligently used business case is one of the most valuable tools available to management. The quality of the business case and the processes involved in its creation and use—as a living operational document—have an enormous impact on creating and sustaining value.

Many books and articles have been written on the topics of governance and portfolio management yet, as the authors of this book point out, adoption continues to proceed at a snail's pace. One objection raised is that the concepts are too academic or theoretical. Where there is recognition of the need to act, the next questions are: "Where do we start?" "How do we do it?" and "How will we know we are successful?" The members of EPMC who contributed to this book are practitioners who collectively have many years experience in using effective business cases and portfolio management to improve their overall governance of IT, and to create and sustain real business value for their enterprises - these guys have been there and live this every day. This book provides valuable practical guidance for all who want to make a difference and help their enterprise realize the full potential of IT-enabled change.

John Thorp

Thought Leader,

Information Systems Audit and Control Association

IT Governance Institute