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投资组合模型 Active Management of the Portfolio: The Operational Model
The key operating considerations for portfolio management of IT are the continuous monitoring of existing "investment" performance (the portfolio component) and the process for adjusting the portfolio through "projects" that impact it.
Investment performance should be monitored through visibility of cost, risk, benefits/yield, and alignment with goals. At the portfolio management level, this must be done in business-facing terms. This is easier said than done. Also, doing so requires stepping back to the point in time at which the portfolio component was introduced and staying in touch with its original justification, predicted performance, and any adjustments that have been made over time.
This implies that active portfolio management requires:
From a cost perspective, that the component is performing within the expected cost performance bandwidth in terms of operating and personnel costs and that this cost structure is competitive in the context of value per dollar.
From a benefits perspective, that the component is maintaining its expected yield in terms of impact on business cost structure, performance, shareholder value, and/or business customers and relationships and/or internal processes and/or the ability of the organization to learn and improve. In terms of "yield," it is critical that the element of benefits timing is introduced, because benefits are expected to accrue at a particular point in time, and associated with this is a benefits trajectory. In managing benefits, it is also critical to factor in external market, regulatory, temporal, or competitive forces that can impact value. Value must also be associated with alignment with enterprise goals.
From a risk management perspective, the components of the portfolio should be diversified and managed along the lines of the amount of risk the enterprise can tolerate. Portfolio components can be segmented into levels of yield and also into levels of risk. Risk factors have to do with the probability of achieving the desired benefits, stability, and pure technology risk. The level of risk associated with a component determines the "tightness" with which it is managed - the frequency of review and even its renewal-funding model.
The "static" portfolio of existing assets should be managed from the perspectives espoused in the previous paragraphs and also from an interaction perspective. That is, how do they interact with each other, and how do they interact with the enterprise?
In perhaps more tangible terms, the portfolio consists of baseline components - things that have to be in place to support the business - and discretionary components - things that must have individualized funding justification to support their existence. In fact, from a budgeting perspective, this implies zero-base budgeting.
The "project portfolio" must use a similar management model. Anything that impacts the portfolio must initially be costed and justified in terms of one or more of the benefits accrual categories. In addition, management must be active to ensure that any deviations from the original plan are evaluated in the context of portfolio impact. Deviations may take the form of changes in costs, timing, potential for value generation, and benefits timing. In addition, deviation may be induced by changes in enterprise strategy or competitive forces in the marketplace. For example, a project being justified on the basis of being "first to market" will have a radical change in value if a competitor gets there first. Therefore the project portfolio requires active management triggered by periodic reviews and external market triggers - technology changes, human resource cost and availability triggers, business alignment triggers, and competitive and regulatory triggers. Risk also must be factored in, and should range from low levels of risk to high-risk/high-yield. The level of risk, by the way, also influences the project management methods and tempo. At the extreme, the riskiest project should be managed as part of a venture portfolio, using a venture management model.
In addition, valuation within the project portfolio must be viewed as dynamic in terms of intraportfolio interaction. Organizations do not typically have unlimited resource pools (either dollars or people). Therefore, a change in valuation of one project may impact the others and even the static portfolio.
实施投资组合 Portfolio Management in Action
It is unlikely that any organization can enact these ideas from "ground zero." Therefore, portfolio management needs to be put into action "in vitro."
The inventory of existing (static) assets must be created; cost, resource consumption, and acceptable bandwidths for cost and quality must be captured; and valuation (and its bandwidth) must be determined. Constructs (metrics) must be implemented to provide the needed visibility into the existing portfolio. Coverage of a number of basic areas is needed: finance, quality, performance, change velocity, staffing/skills, risk (and perhaps audit), profile, effectiveness.
Continuous monitoring of these metrics versus target characteristics enables decisions to be made for the renewal, development, and perhaps the retirement and replacement of portfolio components. This is one mechanism by which projects are originated.
In addition, the inventory of existing projects must be captured and in-process metrics must be developed. These need to focus on various attributes of the project:
·On-time behavior
·On-cost behavior
·On-scope behavior
·On-value behavior (includes benefits trajectory along with expected value)
·Risk level
·Behaviors trend
·Intraproject portfolio impact
·Portfolio impact
·Revaluation triggers
·Thresholds of tolerance for deviation from plans
·Management tempo and funding model (from traditional to venture)
Management of the existing portfolio and the project portfolio must work concurrently. As is true in financial markets, there are both tightly coupled and loosely coupled linkages in the way they interact.
投资组合发展阶段 Where Portfolio Management Fits in IT Organization Evolution
IT organizations appear to be going through a series of evolutionary stages.
The first of these is typified by the role of being a service, or "order taker." Although the role of IT in this stage is not considered strategic in terms of supporting business growth, the cost of IT is. Therefore, the primary focus of IT organizations at this stage is cost management and operational efficiency. Benchmarking is frequently applied as a positioning tool in such organizations, as is radical downsizing.
The second stage is typified by the role of being a business "enabler." The role of IT is considered to be somewhat strategic in supporting growth and looking for new ways to enhance profitability. Aggressive IT investments are often made at this stage. The focus is now shared between cost efficiency and the intangible notion of "effectiveness." More advanced IT organizations at this stage typically try to enact balanced-scorecard projects to monitor both their fiscal accountability and their impact on business customers and processes.
The third stage is typified by the role of the IT organization as a "business within a business." The IT organization still plays a provider role but is held to more rigorous cost and performance standards, with a view to behaving as a free-market competitor. Again, scorecards come into play, with a focus on performance and comparisons with the external world in the dimensions of cost, service quality, relationships, and process efficiency/effectiveness.
The fourth stage is full business integration. The IT organization acts like a business and is managed like a business. This is the stage of portfolio management. In this stage, the IT organization manages its portfolio of activities - from baseline business support to asset renewal and development to high-risk business/IT ventures - in a manner consistent with the principles of best-in-class business practices. The portfolio is actively managed with a focus on yield, risk, risk-taking, and agility.
As stated in the preceding paragraph, portfolio management is a characteristic of this fourth stage but is also somewhat of a precursor to it. Unless portfolio management is embraced, full business integration and a business model of IT cannot be embraced. Perhaps in the full business model there will be no distinction between IT and the "business."
In addition, the concept of portfolio management itself may not be enough. From a total enterprise perspective, the enterprise is a collection of portfolios. For example, in financial services there may be a retail portfolio, a global portfolio, a wholesale portfolio, and so on. Although IT is integrated into each area and there may be cross-area dependencies, the enterprise itself must decide how to balance and manage its investments across these business portfolios along with their IT components. Therefore, at the enterprise level, a "fund management" model may be appropriate to model the movement and allocation of funds across diversified investments.
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