Users prioritize project management

IT interest in project and portfolio management (PPM) technologies is growing, as budget dollars lessen and business demands grow.

Data from Forrester Research shows that project-related investments consume about 18% of overall IT spending, and AMR Research reports more of its clients are inquiring about PPM and how it can help them avoid costs and improve project success rates. For instance, while 15% of some 230 clients asked the research firm about PPM directly, another 14% requested more information on ITIL and other best practice framework, which analysts say directly relates to PPM.

Anne Margulies, assistant secretary and CIO for the commonwealth of Massachusetts, included project management among the top five priorities she has earmarked for the coming year. Margulies spoke Thursday at the Input State Executive Breakfast in Boston, detailing how with two IT budgets to be passed -- one for $450 million to update systems and another for $78 million to build a redundant data center -- she must also make project management a priority.

Questions such as "How are we going to make sure $450 million delivers real value to the commonwealth?" and "How are we going to remain competitive and fair?" could be addressed with proper PPM processes in place, she said.

According to Forrester Research, PPM is a "continuous process feedback loop by which IT management absorbs and prioritizes technology-related demand, plans and allocates financial and human resources to the investment initiatives, manages governance-orientated collaboration with the business stakeholders, delivers the expected results from the investment, and provides reporting to stakeholders for decision-making and the communication of investment status."

Basically, PPM technologies accept feeds of data from many sources -- including IT service management tools, business process management software and business analytics or intelligence tools -- to assess the projects’ priority, rather than relying on old methods of "first in, first out," Gaughan explained. The software helps automate the tracking of various stages in the project life cycle to ensure it stays on track. Vendors like HP, CA, IBM, Innotas, LiquidPlanner, Planview and Primavera offer products to help augment IT’s PPM efforts, but analysts recommend IT and the business work to establish a strong discipline around project management before investing in a tool.

"PPM is not an IT-only thing. It requires business and IT alignment," said Dennis Gaughan, research director at AMR Research, who spoke this week at an HP press event focused on PPM. "Organizations need to get the best practices in place to properly manage projects and investments throughout their life cycle, and then some choose to add a commercial tool to automate parts of the processes."

Gaughan recommends IT groups start working with the business to identify and prioritize key strategies and initiatives. Finance groups would also need to be involved in PPM efforts to "calculate the business case, risk and return," he said. And the adoption of PPM as a discipline could also spawn the creation of new hybrid roles within IT and the business, such as business relationship manager. 

"PPM is a tool IT uses to serve the business better," Gaughan concluded. "Savings and cost avoidance are the most often cited initial justification for PPM software."