decision criteria on IT Portfolio Management

When managing the IT Portfolio we can make use of the IT Portfolio Management Grid (see the previous article in this series), which was developed during my years of practical experience:

When we plot our IT Services Portfolio or our Project Portfolio on this grid, we firstly consider the impact on the value creation in the Business / Organization. The 'IT Demand view' is leading in deciding where to plot a Project / IT Service. From the IT Demand view there are the following major decision criteria:

Ofcourse there are more decision criteria, however, these are usually related to of influencing the major criteria mentioned here. Er zijn natuurlijk nog meer besluitvormingscriteria, maar meestal zijn deze afgeleid van of onderdeel van de genoemde dominante criteria. Met name over de impact op het bedrijfsrisico is het nodige in boeken en op websites terug te vinden.

The second angle of approach is the decision making based on the IT Management Objectives. This leads to the following dominant decision criteria:


There are many good books and websites available on 'IT efficiency' and 'IT effectiveness'. A helpfull tool for decisions on the 'Value added services' is the 'Value Creation Web' (more on this topic in an article about Project Portfolio management).

We need a balanced approach of both views on the IT Portfolio Mangement grid in deciding the on relative importance of the decision criteria in evey cell of this grid.

Populating a IT Portfolio Management Grid in your Organization is a helpfull means in facilitating the dialog between the Business community and the IT community. In my practical experience it happened many times that 'terminology' issues popped up.

After populating the grid for the IT Services Portfolio, this turns out to be usefull when communication e.g. on the SLA's (Service Level Agreements).

The same goes for the (IT) Project Portfolio, more specifically in the area of investment planning the grid has proven its value in the past.