Many IT organizations base their investment decisions by selecting the areas where they feel the most pain, or using the “seat of the pants” method. Although those casual methods have sufficed in the past, IT organizations are coming under fire increasingly, as their business counterparts are dissatisfied with IT’s slow responsiveness to rapidly changing business needs. This dissatisfaction reveals itself in business leaders’ growing interest in pushing IT toward Cloud technologies, with its potential promise of quickly responding to business needs. In order for IT organizations to keep their relevancy for the business, they need to become more proactive and aligned to the needs of the business, which means they must change how they view their services, and their processes for selecting and managing their projects. And that change is based in Project and Portfolio Management (PPM).

PPM is more than a tool that you deploy, it’s a transformation in how IT thinks about how it invests its limited budgets. Traditionally, IT has been primarily task and project focused. PPM changes the game by adding a new dimension to IT’s purview – it’s looking at IT from a portfolio view. There’s a parallel example in financial investing. IT’s project focus is like investing in a single stock in the stock market. Casual investors may pick an eclectic mix of stocks to invest in, with the hope that eventually they’ll come out ahead. But seasoned investors manage their investments as a portfolio, which takes a strategic approach to obtaining their financial objectives by making investments that hedge their risks and optimize their profits within the context of their financial objectives. Likewise, managing IT’s investments from a portfolio view ensures that IT’s investments are in line with the business’ objectives.

“IT aligning with the business” is becoming a tag line that is overused by vendors but it is problematic for IT organizations that are not aligned. In some sense, it’s almost like telling someone that they need to become “enlightened”. If you’re already enlightened, it’s easy to understand what it means. But if you’re not, it’s perplexing. So how do you become “aligned with the business”?

The first step is communicating with your business constituents. That means talking with them to find out what they need, what they care about, etc. But communication also means keeping them informed and giving them visibility into what you’re doing on their behalf. It’s also important that you communicate using terms that they understand, which is what PPM helps with. PPM is a communication vehicle that provides visibility to business and IT constituents, keeping everyone on the same page. For example, instead of blaming IT for “always not meeting the schedule”, business constituents can now see the effect of late changes they’ve made, on project costs and time schedules. So what used to be “their problem” (IT’s problem), now becomes “our problem”, as joint visibility and planning changes the game to a “team” concept.

Similarly, by prioritizing IT investments within the context of what makes sense for IT AND THE BUSINESS, and providing visibility to business counterparts, IT becomes a partner rather than an antagonist to business executives and managers.

Although it won’t solve all of IT’s alignment issues, PPM is a good first step.