In more recent times, this same "portfolio
management" concept has become popular as a way to manage business
investments. At a high-level, many of the same concepts are involved.
You have a limited amount of money to apply to your business. You want
to manage this money as a portfolio to maximize the overall value and to
allow you to reach your goals. A portfolio management process provides a
way to select, prioritize, authorize and manage the totality of work in
the organization or individual department. This includes work that has
been completed, work in-progress and work that has been approved for the
future. Further, it helps you come up with the baseline that you can
subsequently use to measure how well you are managing the portfolio to
meet the department's needs.
Financial portfolio management does not
focus on costs, since the assumption is that expenditures will result in
the purchase of an asset (stocks, bonds, etc.) or a service (trading
fee, investment advice, etc.). Likewise, when you manage your work as a
portfolio, you change the emphasis from the costs of each portfolio
component to the value provided. If the value (and alignment) is right,
the work will get authorized. If the value is not there, the work should
be eliminated, cut or backlogged. This focus on value is especially
appealing to the IT department, which has traditionally been seen as a
cost to the business rather than an enabler for providing business
value.
On some websites, you will find links to
order books. On others, you find a professor's notes from a college
class. Many others will offer consulting help. On this PortfolioStep
website, you will find most of what you need to successfully establish
and manage portfolios of work. Organizations of all sizes can use
PortfolioStep. Smaller business units and departments will not use all
of the processes and features offered. Larger organizations will be able
to use much more. The larger and more sophisticated your unit or
department is, the more material from PortfolioStep you can leverage.
After reviewing the PortfolioStep processes and templates, you will
agree that the content is unique and provides a more comprehensive
picture that is not found anywhere else.
