The IT Skeptic - Comments for "IT project portfolios are bursting while BAU crumbles!"

getting a round tuit

skeptic — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 22:40:00 +0000

*erk* Taming Change has been on my reading pile all year! Sorry Terry! Opening it now...

Taming Change

John Worthington aka MySvcMon — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 22:27:59 +0000

I thought I had posted on this book before; it's worth reading. I reviewed it HERE.

It certainly seems to me that IT tends to either ignore or cannot get the business to deal with reconciling execution portfolios....

John M. Worthington
MyServiceMonitor, LLC

managing service portfolio

skeptic — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 00:13:39 +0000

Go read Helen Morris's continuation of this idea in an excellent post on ITSM Portal where she looks at what's to be done about it. I made the comment over there:

Flip all the issues I listed and you get the solutions. The key is managing service portfolio as compared to project portfolio, or worse still a completely uncontrolled mass of projects. But service portfolio management will only work once IT has the credibility to belly-up to the top table.

And while I completely agree that IT must not be "The Department of No", sometimes IT has to be able to (credibly) say "No, not unless you come up with more money from somewhere". Part of our role is to protect existing investment.

IT project portfolios are bursting while BAU crumbles! True..

CyberJMC66 — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 22:08:15 +0000

This is the fatal flaw that I have highlighted in a number of papers and presentations... IT organizations don't track their portfolio's properly (which you mentioned) and continue to grow RTB (Run the Business) costs without knowing it. There's a fixed amount of budget, and when IT is FORCED to work in Business Growth (GTB) or Transformation (TTB), they don't address RTB which guts cut and BAU crumbles..

If the entire IT service portfolio was managed financially ACROSS Run, Grow and Transform, they would realize; "We have to reduce costs in RTB in order to invest in growth and transformation...". However, I see more investment going into MASSIVE Run the business focus...

The fatal flaw (wait for it) (and this isn't mentioned in ITIL); This years Growth/Transformation investment becomes next years RTB cost... All too often overlooked...

Hey, we've run out of budget, where do we cut?

John M. Clark