Prioritizing It Project Management Portfolio free essay sample

The realities of shrinking IT budgets and increasing dependence on IT in organizations in recent years has resulted in a situation in which there is an intense competition for resources needed to execute and complete IT projects. According to Ross (2007), the shrinking IT budget in the face of increasing demand has brought new pressures to the IT function. To gain approval and funding for projects, IT departments must demonstrate that such new project will either result in cost saving, increased sales, or result in greater enterprise-wide efficiency (Ross, 2007). The intense competition for resources makes it imperative that IT managers need to prioritize their projects in order to gain approval and funding. To help them effectively prioritize, many IT managers have embraced IT project portfolio management strategies to enable them insightfully decide what project should get funding and what projects should be postponed, shelved, or cancelled. What is Project Portfolio Management? Essentially, Project Portfolio management enables organizations to align their IT and application development projects, resources, and initiatives to corporate business objectives by developing and monitoring measures that treat IT assets as financial assets and to run as a project-oriented business (Reddy, 2004). We will write a custom essay sample on Prioritizing It Project Management Portfolio or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page This statement is supported by Ross (2007), in his submission that many CIOs and IT project managers are applying the principles of investment portfolio management to managing IT project portfolios. This implies that Project Portfolio Management enables IT managers to manage IT project portfolios as one would manage a portfolio of diverse financial investments. Goal of Project Portfolio Management : The goal of PPM is to identify and prioritize the projects within an organization, to ensure that appropriate resources can be applied in a timely manner. This is done through the establishment of systems that provide status report on going and pending projects to enable optimal allocation of resources to complete projects that support the organizations strategic plan. PPM enables integrated management of pipeline, scope, time, resource, skills, cost, procurement, communication, reporting and forecasting, and risk management functions (Reddy, 2004). * This paper will now attempt to prioritize IT projects in the project portfolio of the New York based company XYZ Incorporated. Company XYZ Inc. is a New York-based garment production company that has been in business for over 30 years. The sad events of September 11, 2001 brought hardships and and a drop in business volumes for organizations in the New York downtowm and Midtown areas. This combined with the resulting depression and an unpredictable global economy to undermine business growth in the USA in general and New York City in particular. To improve its market share and profitability, the company would like to invest in an Enterprise Resource planning system, E-mail exchanger system, Database system, and upgrade its Network infrastructure. * Because of the bad economy, the organization cannot afford to fund and support all four projects at the same time. The C. E. O has therefore asked the CIO to prioritize the projects and let him know which one should be implemented first and the order in which the remaining projects will be implemented while maintaining alignment with the organization’s overall strategy. The criteria for this prioritization will consider the ability for the projects to drive and create more revenue for the corporation, Cut operating costs, governmental mandates, and whether the organization’s competitors have implemented these technologies. A scoring system will also be developed weighting each criterion. In some IT projects, all may apply. Provide your analysis by observing how you evaluate each project in comparison to how the target organization evaluates each project. * To properly rank and prioritize the projects in its portfolio, the IT department has to utilized a point ranking system. Points were assigned to each project on a scale of 1 -10. The higher a project scores on this point system the better the chances of its being a priority for execution.