Aligning Your Project Goals

So, how do you decide which initiatives to move forward and with what resources? A PPM solution will provide management information to help you make these vital decisions. Compuware has worked with hundreds of leading organizations, large and small, throughout the world. The company’s comprehensive IT portfolio management solution, Changepoint, helps organizations take the realistic and incremental steps needed to effectively manage the business of IT. The key to success lies in the ability to map out an ideal path for the future and to take pragmatic steps in your organization today, to begin realizing the value immediately.

To respond to the changing business environment, there are a number of critical success factors organizations must consider.

First, gain stakeholder support – portfolio management won’t get off the ground without support from its respective organizational leaders. Gaining support within IT and the business is critical to ensuring stakeholders buy-in to the portfolio discipline. One approach to gaining this buy-in is to identify and communicate unique benefits for each individual stakeholder. For example, if your CFO requires increased transparency into IT investments, show him/her how management reports from Changepoint will provide this transparency.

Next, leverage best practices. Successful IT portfolio management involves key IT processes, metrics and reports. While creating these from scratch could be time-consuming and costly, this does not have to derail your initiative. The Changepoint solution embodies best practices to help you get started. Changepoint provides out-of-the-box templates, reports, methodologies and processes to help your organization achieve results quickly, to deliver on the promise to your stakeholders.

Third, improve operational effectiveness. Portfolio management will deliver cost savings and resource realignment for your organization by enabling you to identify and eliminate redundant or underperforming projects. In turn, you are able to reallocate your resources more effectively. Changepoint gives you transparency projects and resources, helping you make informed resource management decisions.

As you build momentum in your ITPM initiative and execute on your roadmap, there are then another set of critical success factors to consider to help enrich the decision-making environment.

First, expand beyond the project portfolio. With your project portfolio established, you can apply the same portfolio discipline to your inventory of proposed initiatives and applications in production. Changepoint not only provides you with visibility into your project portfolio, but helps you manage all the work of IT – within the planning portfolio, application portfolio and project portfolio. This gives a comprehensive view into the interdependencies between each of the portfolios, and the resources that deliver on this work, improving overall IT investment decision-making.

Having collective visibility into the business of IT also enables the steering committee to make more informed decisions in the interests of your entire organization. Changepoint helps to collect demand and provides the steering committee with a richer set of information that is essential during the portfolio review process, allowing for more informed decision-making process and a deeper financial analysis of the portfolio.

At the end of the day, IT resources need to be aligned the expectations of the business. By obtaining visibility into all of the work of IT, skill sets and availability, Compuware Changepoint ensures initiatives are aligned with the best available resource.

In today’s environment, there’s no room for misaligned projects or resources. You require the sophisticated management dashboards and project and performance reporting available in Compuware Changepoint to deliver value to your business.

Business-centric IT management

Compuware Changepoint enables you to:

• Align IT resources with business strategy
• Manage the full spectrum of IT activity
• Communicate the IT value delivered

Lori Ellsworth is the VP of Portfolio and Delivery Management Solutions at Compuware, leading a strategic organization to enable IT executives to more effectively manage the business of IT.