The promise of IT portfolio management is the quantification of previously informal IT efforts, enabling measurement and objective evaluation of investment scenarios.
As pointed out by Jeffery and Leliveld,[1] companies have spent billions of dollars on IT investments and yet the headlines of mis-spent money are not uncommon.
Nicholas Carr (2003) has caused significant controversy in IT industry and academia by positioning IT as an expense similar to utilities such as electricity.
Financial portfolio assets typically have consistent measurement information (enabling accurate and objective comparisons), and this is at the base of the concept’s usefulness in application to IT.
While balanced scorecards also emphasize the use of vision and strategy in any investment decision, oversight and control of operation budgets is not the goal.
[4] Gibson and Nolan proposed that IT advances in observable stages driven by four "growth processes" of which the Applications Portfolio was key.
"[1] MappIT is a free tool used to map and analyze IT SEC Portfolio assets (systems, business processes, infrastructure, people, skills, roles, organization, spending...) and their lifecycle.
The Management of Portfolios (MoP) standard of AXELOS defines a project as "... a temporary organization, usually existing for a much shorter time than a programme, which will deliver one or more outputs in accordance with a specific business case.
The MoP and Management of Successful Programmes (MSP) standards define a programme as "... a temporary, flexible organization created to coordinate, direct and oversee the implementation of a set of related projects and activities in order to deliver outcomes and benefits related to the organizations's strategic objectives.
A portfolio is a group of related initiatives, projects and/or programs that attain wide reaching benefits and impact.
MoP definition: "An organization's portfolio is the totality of its investment (or segment therof) in the changes required to achieve its strategic objectives.