An Empirical Study into the State of Practice and Challenges in IT Project Portfolio Management

Abstract

Optimizing IT investments in alignment with key business drivers is a challenge for all organizations. Organizations need to prioritize and select a portfolio of IT projects that provides optimal benefit and balances utility, risk, and resources. This paper reports on an exploratory empirical study into the processes and project-selection criteria used by several large companies. The objective of this research is to identify successful practices as well as some common challenges that companies have in performing IT portfolio management. These empirical findings provide insight into the current state of practice and common challenges. These form the basis for guidelines for implementing and improving IT portfolio processes.