IT GOVERNANCE – PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT

“Good governance of an organisation’s portfolio provides an opportunity to improve the management of projects and programmes consistently”

Portfolio management deals with execution of strategic direction and involves the evaluation and selection of programmes to fund, evaluation of individual programme performance and setting a balance between investment and benefit, creating and closing programmes and projects. It is sometimes necessary to close a programme or project prematurely when the need or benefits are no longer viable.

COBIT 5 places Portfolio management in the APO (Align plan and organise) stream. This means portfolio management is majorly focusing on strategic alignment of IT investments and the planning of programmes and projects. COBIT 5 divides IT portfolio into three categories:

1.      Investment portfolio

2.      Service portfolio

3.      Asset and resource portfolio

 “Portfolio management will enable an organisation optimise the performance of the overall portfolio of programmes in response to programme and service performance and changing enterprise priorities and demands”.

Establishing the right investment matrix is the responsibility of the CEO and CFO in consultation with business executives (programme sponsors), CRO, CISO, Compliance, audit, CIO and head architect. The board is accountable for establishing the target investment mix. Sometimes, for a correct investment matrix, strategy change may be necessary.

Selection of programmes to fund happens after planning the programme, its benefits realisation plan, and the conceptual programme case. If the programme is selected for funding and execution, it is launched and the related projects under it thereof.

The project management office is responsible for maintaining the investment portfolio in partnership with the business executives (programme sponsors) and the CIO. The strategic execution committee is accountable for maintaining portfolios. 

Programme management

Programme management is at execution level and deals with managing all programmes and projects from the investment portfolio with alignment with the enterprise strategy and in a coordinated way.

At programme initiation, you prepare a programme conceptual business case, programme mandate and brief and programme benefit realisation plan which are inputs to for the evaluation and selection of programmes to fund at portfolio level.

If selected and approved, a programme plan covering all projects is developed to lay initial groundwork and to position the programme for successful execution by formalising the scope of work and the deliverables that will satisfy its goals and deliver value. The programme is then launched by commissioning the necessary projects needed to achieve the programme results. Continuous monitoring, control and reporting on the programme performance is then done by the Project management office, Value management office and the projects/programme steering committee.

Project management.

Projects are started up and initiated within programmes. The programme/project steering committee is accountable for all the project management actions and it is required to keep the strategic execution committee updated on the project management.