Customer Reviews

IT Portfolio Management: Unlocking the Business Value of Technology

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There is absolutely no doubt that all enterprises, small or large, are completely reliant technology to operate. Companies have aggressively built and deployed IT solutions. My experience has been that most executives kind of treat this as a black box. They understand that there are major benefits to deploying various IT solutions (and they are right), but they don't really understand the how and the why. This is where this book comes in. I think that it is essential reading for executives, particularly those who are not strong in IT. Executives need to really understand the hard issues related to managing their IT portfolio -- how should they manage their IT portfolios. This book provides an excellent road map. It will show you how to evaluate your IT portfolio in a concise and easy-to-read manner. I'm big into charts and checklists and this book provides them. With a bewildering array of IT options and the difficult task of sorting and prioritizing, this book will serve as an essential guide.

Paradigm shift is an overused term, but if there is a field in need of one, it is enterprise IT management. IT Portfolio Management presents the first detailed overview of an emerging, business-focused approach for managing all things IT.

If you only buy and read one book on IT management this year, it should be this one. The introductory summation of just how bad things generally are in enterprise IT is worth the price alone.

IT portfolio management ultimately presents the challenging idea of an overall, end to end value chain of IT investments, from initial idea inception through prioritization, delivery, management, optimization, and retirement. Handler and Maizlish propose the formal management of Discovery, Project, and Asset portfolios; their discussion of the Asset portfolio is a groundbreaking examination of issues that too many IT organizations are just beginning to face up to.

This well written book has detailed case studies from Cisco, In-Q-Tel, and Excel Energy, and much specific guidance in the form of checklists, charts, tables, and more.

I recently saw a figure of $800 billion per year for the combined expenditure on IT by US corporations. Given the massive size of this capital investment, it is very surprising how few substantive books there are written on its general issues. Technical publishing usually produces detailed reference guides that are soon obsolete; this book (like the recent _IT Governance_ by Weill and Ross) is in the smaller category of works that discuss more general issues of large scale IT management, and should have staying power far beyond the latest .Net tome.

If you are in IT management or concerned with the architecture of IT enablement systems - buy it. Now!

This book is well written and pefect for IT professionals that have service inmprovement duties.

Repenting its devotion to IT, since the majority of expressed ideas
(and referenced methodologies) are equally applicable to any other LoB.

Besides some terminology slips (discussing risk) and perception of
architecture (as a technology attribute) - very solid, highly recommended
PfM piece.

IMO, STAGE 3: "Populate the Portfolio" could benefit with presentation of
a more realistic "mix determination" methodology. While the value of Business
case is indisputable, its existence alone is hardly a ticket for inclusion.
So is risk/value, especially where "Life cycle" and "Regulatory" drivers
(p. 224) prevail.

Thank you for your time!

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An afterthought: statement "IT is a cost center" should evaluate to true for
most businesses, contra to the author's perspective.
Disagree? Imagine a business and answer yourself these Qs:
1. That business of yours is 50 years old or more?
2. Would that business collapse, if IT is replaced by the maintenance team,
servicing calculators as powerful as modern desktops?

If answers are Yes and No, IT is, indeed, a costly cost center in support of
other LoBs.