"There is nothing like the thought of having to pack your toothbrush on your way to prison in helping executives to focus on their role in corporate governance."

-- Alan Fels, Chairman of the Anti-Competition Commission, Australia, September 2002

Any time there are different regions of the world, there may be an opportunity for technology arbitrage. What's common sense in one area of the world may be rocket science in another.

Any time there are different regions of the world, there may be an opportunity for technology arbitrage. What's common sense in one area of the world may be rocket science in another.

WHAT ROGER SESSIONS SAID:

As IT becomes further integrated into business -- and, in fact, is the business -- it is critical that an enterprise's IT assets be in full, fluid alignment with business needs and actively managed from an investment perspective -- risk, yield, benefits, etc. -- rather than solely a cost-side perspective, as is widely practiced today. As such, the financial services metaphors of portfolio management and perhaps fund management are applicable and essential to the management of new-age IT.

Whether implicitly or explicitly, portfolio management has always been a key function of IT management. Selecting which projects to undertake, allocating resource levels to projects, and monitoring results across projects are key portfolio management activities. Today, just as individuals have learned about risk/reward strategies from recent stock market plunges, IT organizations are adjusting the "mix" of their project portfolios to emphasize cost reduction and decreased risks. However, it's still important to manage the entire mix of potential projects.

In these days of economic uncertainty and crashing stock prices, everyone is searching for safe investment opportunities. One of the best ways to get more for your money is to improve the performance of your existing investments. From an IT perspective, the biggest and most valuable investment is its portfolio of application software.

With the wealth of information showering IT executives and managers daily, the need for simplicity is greater than ever. An executive in an environment where outsourcing is prominent must deal with service provider issues, plus worry about satisfying business customers, recruiting and retaining IT staff, and monitoring the project portfolio. Throw in operations issues, infrastructure improvements, and shrinking budgets, and you have a seriously overwhelmed individual.

In the first part of this series, we described how project dashboards can be used to monitor project and portfolio status. Given a high-level view of a project's current status or the status of multiple projects, executives and managers can target questions and intervention into areas where measures indicate threats to success.

Every manager has a good idea of what portfolio management means in an investment context. It's about stepping back and looking at the entirety of your investments to ensure that they make sense when viewed as a group. In doing this, we consider the characteristics of investments along a variety of dimensions. For example, we consider how risky they are; we don't want a portfolio that includes only risky or safe investments, instead, we want a good mix.

Instant messaging (IM) has entered the global culture over the past few years, transitioning from its humble beginnings as a tool for systems programmers into a pop phenomenon.

Instant messaging (IM) has entered the global culture over the past few years, transitioning from its humble beginnings as a tool for systems programmers into a pop phenomenon.

Instant messaging (IM) has rapidly moved from an Internet fad to the boardroom -- or nearly so. Over the past few years, corporate use of IM has exploded, with estimates suggesting that nearly 30% of IM daily traffic of the large service providers -- AOL, MSN, and Yahoo -- is related to corporate use. Mounting evidence, including a recent Cutter survey, corroborates these findings.

Instant messaging (IM) has rapidly moved from an Internet fad to the boardroom -- or nearly so. Over the past few years, corporate use of IM has exploded, with estimates suggesting that nearly 30% of IM daily traffic of the large service providers -- AOL, MSN, and Yahoo -- is related to corporate use. Mounting evidence, including a recent Cutter survey, corroborates these findings.

How much are you spending on technology? Who pays for what? How do you determine funding responsibilities? And how do you determine how to pay for infrastructure, applications, R&D, and ongoing technology management? These are huge issues -- especially when you consider that the US spends more than one trillion dollars a year on hardware, software, and services. Yes -- a trillion dollars!

How many of us wrestle with the question "who should report to whom?" several times a year? Have your efforts to "reorganize" the business-technology relationship been proactive or reactive? Often, because some influential people complain about the relationship, things change. But reactive changes usually don't last long.

How many of us wrestle with the question "who should report to whom?" several times a year? Have your efforts to "reorganize" the business-technology relationship been proactive or reactive? Often, because some influential people complain about the relationship, things change. But reactive changes usually don't last long.

Most great athletes are born with great reaction times. Their ability to run faster, hit a ball farther, or avoid a tackle is often predicated on the fact that their neural system is simply faster than their opponents'. In a sense, the same thing is true about enterprises. Great businesses also seem to have great reaction times.

Most great athletes are born with great reaction times. Their ability to run faster, hit a ball farther, or avoid a tackle is often predicated on the fact that their neural system is simply faster than their opponents'. In a sense, the same thing is true about enterprises. Great businesses also seem to have great reaction times.

Historically, technology has always had a major impact on how businesses do business. The invention of the telegraph 150 years ago revolutionized how organizations communicated. It also made it possible for organizations to grow larger than had been possible before, coordinate over greater geographical spaces, and react faster.