Article

Improving the Business-IT Relationship with IT Project Portfolio Management

Posted January 31, 2015 | Leadership |

The relationship between some IT departments and their business colleagues is adversarial rather than collaborative, resulting in mistrust and conflict instead of respect and cooperation. 1 One of the causes is the inability to agree on investment and project priorities, which leads to contentious or misunderstood decisions on schedules and resource allocation and almost inevitably to wasting funds on too many failed projects -- up to 70%, if surveys are to be believed. 2 Business colleagues believe their IT counterparts favor projects they want to do rather than those that are most important to the business, whilst IT people believe business "priorities" are not always based on sound justifications and change too frequently.

About The Author
Elizabeth Ward
John Ward
John Ward is Professor of Strategic Information Systems at Cranfield University, School of Management (UK). Cranfield is a postgraduate university with an international reputation in the fields of engineering, aerospace, and manufacturing technology. Its School of Management is one of Europe's leading business schools. Mr. Ward's main interests are the strategic uses of IS/IT, the integration of IS/IT strategies with business strategies, the… Read More
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