The Tao of IT Portfolio Management€¦ · The Tao of IT Portfolio Management About Innotas: Innotas provides an easy-to-use, rapid-to-deploy, and cost-effective way to manage resources

If You Do Not Change DirectionYou May End Up Where You’re Heading

Cloud Solutions for IT Management

The Tao of IT Portfolio Management

About Innotas: Innotas provides an easy-to-use, rapid-to-deploy, and cost-effective way to manage resources and budgets across an entire inventory of projects, portfolios, applications, assets, and service requests. The only cloud-native company that offers both Project Portfolio Management and Application Portfolio Management, Innotas provides IT and business management with visibility for decision making across entire portfolio.

THE TAO OF IT POrTFOlIO MANAGEMENT 2

ContentsIntroduction

Step 1: You Notice Things Have Gotten TrickyAll difficult things in the world are sure to arise from a previous stage in

which they were easy.

Step 2: Spreadsheet HellTo know that you do not know is the best. To pretend to know when you

do not know is a disease.

Step 3: Project Portfolio Management from the Bottom UpTo know that you do not know is the best. To pretend to know when you


Step 4: Limitations of Basic Project Portfolio ManagementTo know that you do not know is the best. To pretend to know when you


Step 5: Crave VisibilityDo you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?

Step 6: Realize One Size Does Not Fit AllMust you value what others value, avoid what others avoid?

How ridiculous!

Step 7: Focus on the Objectives and the OutcomeWe hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that

makes it livable.

Step 8: Lay a Solid FoundationGravity is the root of lightness.

Step 9: Implement an IT Portfolio Management ApproachPrevent trouble before it arises. Put things in order before they exist.

Step 10: You Find the WayIn harmony with the Tao; inlcuding strategic, financial and

competetive advantages.

ConclusionIf you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

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If you work with one of the many organizations today facing challenges in Project Portfolio Management, don’t worry—you’re not alone. A complex and chaotic IT infrastructure has become an albatross around the neck for a number of businesses.

Fortunately, in recognizing your burden, you begin the path to harmony. Following guidance from the age-old text, Tao de Ching, this eBook walks you through the 10 steps to achieving enlightenment through Integrated IT Portfolio Management.

Ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu first introduced the world

to Taoism around 6th century B.C. Since then, people have been

drawn to the idea of the Tao because it offers a way to understand

and organize elements in our lives so that we may find harmony.

What happens when we apply the Tao to IT project management?

Can we achieve serenity now?

Introduction3

return to table of contents

THE TAO OF IT POrTFOlIO MANAGEMENT

All difficult things in the world are sure to arise from a previous stage in which they were easy.

Technology is an interesting thing. While it’s designed to make business easier, it is often intrinsically complex. This paradox can put your company in a tough predicament. You continue to implement more technology in an effort to simplify business processes, as well as to keep pace with innovation and industry trends. Yet the more technology you add, the more confusion you create.

Eventually, you realize you’re at a crossroads. You feel forced to choose between managing your infrastructure growth and optimizing the maintenance of your existing applications.

What do you do?

Step 1: You Notice Things Have Gotten Tricky

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To know that you do not know is the best. To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease.

In an effort to stem the chaos, you take action. Your team creates proliferous spreadsheets to track the projects and applications you’ve got in play. But what begins with good intentions quickly becomes problematic.

At some point, with many departments adding projects, and many people running them, you cross a threshold. Instead of managing growth, you’re now just struggling to keep things running. Spreadsheets tell you nothing. Your team has no big picture. Things are changing too fast and too often. At some point, something has to give. You don’t know what’s going on—and you have no time or resources left for innovation.

Is there a way out?

Step 2: You Enter Spreadsheet Hell



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The foolish expend a great deal of energy and time trying to do everything and end up achieving nothing.

You know you need help managing your project portfolio, so you dive in with gusto. Because your company’s infrastructure, applications, and projects have become so intertwined, you do what seems natural: You try to untangle the mess at the root.

A lot of companies have tried the same kind of “bottom-up” approach to Project Portfolio Management (PPM). Most, however, didn’t fare so well.

As Gartner analysts explained in the 2012 MarketScope for Project and Portfolio Management Software Applications,

“[many early customers] believed they must implement PPM

software automation at painful levels of detail (such as task- and

assignment-level time reporting)…. Unfortunately, many initial

PPM software investments failed when this bottom-up approach

to project portfolio management was chosen, due mainly to the

high levels of complexity, low levels of adoption and extensive

organization change management required to get the entire

execution side of a project organization using the same system.”1

In other words, a “bottom-up” effort at PPM gets mired in the tactical details, where many hands touch projects and many infrastructure components collide, and where change is therefore difficult to enforce. This approach is only about the trees—and does not address the problems that lurk in the forest at large.

What now?

1. MarketScope for IT Project and Portfolio Management Software Applications, Gartner (Daniel Stang, Robert Handler), 27 June 2012.

Step 3: You Attempt Project Portfolio Management from the Bottom Up



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Look, and it can’t be seen. Listen, and it can’t be heard. Reach, and it can’t be grasped.

You realize your initial effort isn’t working. Furthermore, you realize that your “bottom-up” approach leads to numerous other limitations. Perhaps you jumped in a little too quickly.

Again, you’re not the only one. According to a 2012 global project management survey by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 32% of companies blame project management failure primarily on “poor estimation during the planning phase.”1

In addition, survey respondents cite these reasons for their poor success rates:

• Lack of executive sponsorship

• Poorly defined goals and objectives

• Changes in scope mid-project

• Insufficient resources

• Poor communication

But why are these things—seemingly critical components of any project management effort—slipping through the cracks? Why can’t you see these things coming?

1. Insights and Trends: Current Portfolio, Programme, and Project Management Practices: The third global survey on the current state of project management. PriceWaterhouseCoopers. 2012.

Step 4: You see the limitations of Basic Project Portfolio Management



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Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?

Visibility is the issue. In accumulating a complex IT infrastructure, you’ve made it nearly impossible to align applications and projects to overarching business objectives because you can’t see how they connect. And when you can’t see the big picture, you can’t assess performance.

PWC’s global project management survey outlined five key performance indicators by which successful projects should be measured1:

• Time: Successful projects meet deadlines.

• Budget: They also stay within budget constraints.

• Scope: They have a defined scope, and they don’t stray from it.

• Quality: Successful projects have set quality standards and can adhere to them.

• Benefit: Finally, they achieve their intended business benefits.

Step 5: You Start to Crave Visibility

In order to do well against these metrics, you need some means of relating them to each of your IT projects and investments. Is there a software solution that can give you real visibility across the whole range, from the application level to the business impact level? Something that lets you see everything?

return to table of contents 1. Ibid.


Step 6: You realize One Size Does Not Fit All8

Must you value what others value, avoid what others avoid?

This is the point at which many companies become entranced with the idea of a large software suite. They recognize a big company brand, and they are enticed by a laundry list of features and functions.

But suite solutions are not the answer for everyone. Often, they are the result of acquisition upon acquisition—more of a corporate re-packaging effort than a collection of well-designed applications.

Pay attention, as you investigate, to:

“…the downside of suites—the time, cost, risk and disruption of

a multi-year implementation project—and the fact that all that

hardwired integration often comes at the cost of increased

complexity and rigidity….Unless there’s a broad, internal

consensus and a willingness to replace existing processes with

those supported in the software package, the suite approach

doesn’t make much sense.”1

But if not a suite, then what?

return to table of contents 1. “Suites vs. Best of Breed: The Argument Rages On,” Jim Shepherd, Vice President, Distinguished Analyst, Gartner, March 22, 2011.


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According to PWC:

Organizational business strategy is intended to drive all

decisions within an organization. It provides a direction, a

rallying point, and basis for decision-making. Hence, it only

stands to reason that organizational business strategy should

form the basis and drive project portfolio and scope.1

What you’re missing is alignment with organizational strategy. Contrary to what you’ve tried before, this means taking a top-down approach—starting with strategy and aligning it downward with each project and application.

How do you start?

Step 7: You Focus on the Objectives and Outcome

return to table of contents 1. Insights and Trends: Current Portfolio, Programme, and Project Management Practices: The third global survey on the current state of project management. PriceWaterhouseCoopers. 2012.

We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable.

Stop for a moment and consider what you’ve learned along this journey. You’ve realized you’re in a complicated bind. You took one approach and found that getting bogged down at the execution level prevented you from making progress. You understand now that while the details are important, you need big-picture visibility into projects in order to manage them successfully. And you are cautious enough to know that software suites don’t solve all problems all people.

It’s time now to determine what you do need. You’ve built the infrastructure—but what’s inside? What are all your IT projects and applications for?


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Gravity is the root of lightness.

Take inventory of everything within your IT infrastructure. Odds are you have a jumble of legacy applications buried in newer applications, and you’re working hard to maintain them all—without knowing if you even need everything you have.

Organizations that align their organization’s overall strategies with

their project portfolios and prioritize their portfolios’ priorities with

the strategy are more likely to have portfolios that meet schedule,

scope, quality, budget and business benefits requirements. 1

Ask yourself what in your portfolio is working and what isn’t. If the root of your IT crisis is a worsening lack of visibility, then solving the problem means clearing the water—determining what’s obsolete, what’s necessary, and what needs updating. It also means managing new projects, as well as new and existing applications, proactively to prevent the clear water from muddying again.

With this philosophy, you’ll be much more likely moving forward to lay a foundation that makes sense from the top down.

If you don’t yet have the visibility to make these determinations, that’s okay. You’re about to.

Step 8: You Must lay a Solid Foundation

return to table of contents 1. Ibid.


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Unlike competitive solutions, Innotas applications work together to enable businesses to intelligently tackle both the high-level tasks that fuel the desire for growth (such as strategic alignment with business objectives) and the more root-level tasks that keep your critical applications (both legacy and new) running optimally.

By integrating these functions, Innotas not only provides transparency and visibility across the whole organization, but it also reveals new value by uncovering—at long last—the tremendous financial impact and system contingencies of an organization’s entire portfolio of IT-related work. In addition, robust APIs allow for integrating Innotas with other critical software and systems.

Prevent trouble before it arises. Put things in order before they exist.

Remember that crossroads? The one where you’re facing the perplexing choice between focusing resources on application maintenance or infrastructure growth and optimization?

You no longer have to choose one over the other. The real solution to your overgrown IT infrastructure has become clear: You simply need visibility in order to achieve alignment between applications, projects, and strategies—from the top down.

This is the heart of Integrated IT Portfolio Management—and it’s where Innotas excels. Innotas offers cloud-based applications for both Application Portfolio Management (APM) and Project Portfolio Management (PPM).

Step 9: You Implement an Integrated IT Portfolio Management Approach



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What is APM?

APM software enables businesses to manage the costs and risks of their distinct applications in one place with more accurate detail. This more accurate approach can facilitate an application rationalization and roadmap strategy which dramatically improves an organization’s ability to plan for upgrades, migrations, and other changes. In addition, as you more quickly identify redundant or obsolete applications, you can weed out unnecessary complexity while cutting support costs.

What is PPM?

PPM helps businesses gain a big-picture perspective on the major

IT project investments often launched due to dynamic industry

trends, advances in technology, or regulatory requirements. These

projects have numerous moving parts and changing priorities that,

with limited IT staff, can be overwhelming to track. PPM helps you

understand each project at every level, from objectives to costs.

It also makes it easy to pinpoint projects that don’t warrant any

resource investment, so you can focus on only those initiatives

that support strategic, regulatory, or business goals.

Step 9: You Implement an Integrated IT Portfolio Management Approach (cont.)



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In harmony with the Tao, the sky is clear and spacious, the earth is solid and full, all creatures flourish together, content with the way they are, endlessly repeating themselves, endlessly renewed.

The benefits of an Integrated IT Portfolio Management approach are substantial, and industry analysts are recognizing the impact that this type of project management can have on an organization.

Integrated visibility across different IT silos or domains can bring

their often unique perspectives to the table to enhance capital

and strategic IT investment prioritization and decision making for

a CIO, an IT steering committee, a governance board or council,

or an IT PMO.1

[Integrated IT Portfolio Management] … enables IT managers to see

the cost, effort, technical complexity, feasibility and interrelated

effects of a proposed IT change or initiative before it is approved.2

Step 10: You Find the WayHere’s a breakdown of other advantages you can find in your new state of enlightenment:

Strategic advantages

• Increase accountability across all of your projects, so stakeholders know how their work is measured against corporate objectives.

• Clean out the application clutter, and make it easier for numerous departments to communicate requests and adopt new IT projects.

• Gain visibility into your entire IT application and project portfolio, so you can draw clear lines between what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

return to table of contents1. MarketScope for IT Project and Portfolio Management Software Applications, Gartner (Daniel Stang, Robert Handler), June 27, 2012.2. Magic Quadrant for Integrated IT Portfolio Analysis Applications, Gartner, November 28, 2012.


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Financial advantages

• Reach deadlines more quickly and efficiently, while reducing the real costs of poor IT project management. In addition, you can reduce overall costs by closely monitoring, managing and optimizing investments in new technology.

• Manage your IT financials and resources more rigorously, so you can boost the productivity that results in a positive impact to your bottom line.

• Eliminate project delays, and reduce the risk of incurring the cost penalties associated with falling behind schedule.

Competitive advantages

• Get back to innovation and forward-thinking ideas, as more budgetary and human capital resources are free to focus on advancing—rather than simply maintaining—technology.

• Gain end-to-end visibility at all levels, so you can see what you’re doing now, plan for what you need to be doing a few months down the road, and eliminate what you shouldn’t be doing at all.

These advantages have been substantiated, as evidenced by PWC’s recent global study. In fact, of the companies surveyed that have adopted an Integrated IT Portfolio Management approach, two thirds report that more than 90% of their projects are performing to expectations against the five KPIs (time, budget, scope, quality, benefit). Want further proof? Of the companies that have not yet gone with an Integrated IT Portfolio Management solution, an overwhelming majority state their projects are going the opposite direction, with less than 10% performing to KPIs. (And the more complex the infrastructure scenario, the worse the news gets.)1

Step 10: You Find the Way (cont.)

return to table of contents 1. Insights and Trends: Current Portfolio, Programme, and Project Management Practices: The third global survey on the current state of project management. PriceWaterhouseCoopers. 2012


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Innotas111 Sutter Street, Suite 300San Francisco, CA 94104Tel: +1.415.263.9800Toll-free: 1.866.692.7362www.innotas.com - [email protected]

Copyright ©2013, Innotas. All rights reserved. Innotas is a trademark of Innotas, a California company. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. Innotas_EB_TaoofITPM_2013-04-10

Cloud Solutions for IT Management

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

Taoism offers wisdom on many levels—including that of the increasingly complex IT infrastructure. If you are headed down the wrong path, now is the time to pay heed. You can halt the growing chaos and, in fact, dramatically improve your outcome. By integrating both APM and PPM solutions to provide real visibility into your entire Information Technology portfolio, Innotas solutions provide the effective management necessary to improve efficiency, cut costs, and put your business on the path to harmony.

For more information, contact [email protected] or call 866-692-7362, Ext. 1

Conclusion



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The Tao of IT Portfolio Management€¦ · The Tao of IT Portfolio Management About Innotas: Innotas provides an easy-to-use, rapid-to-deploy, and cost-effective way to manage resources