How do we implement IT Portfolio Management in manufacturing company?

Hi Ginny,

good advice given so far.

1. change your attitude from believing to knowing (by communicating, getting/giving commitments, documenting decisions)
2. if your sponsor is indeed the CIO, he should be able to give you his key requirements, probably based on pains - write them down, if you can, get a charter
3. with no process in place a key pain should be "portfolio visibility" which can be solved with a projects (and maybe project candidates) dashboard, but even that is not easy as you need (standardized) input from many stakeholders
4. limit the scope by only looking at the top 30-40 projects (20% have 80% impact) - you may call it MVP if you need
5. avoid tools as long as you can
6. avoid resource management as long as you can
7. define and plan your project with deadlines, should be less than 18 months induration
8. once you delivered your first product, start looking for the next pain, maybe "we have to many project ideas and try to do too many projects at a time (which often leads to staff burnouts and delays), so we need a decision process to start projects and which"
9. once you get to define the selection decision process, make sure those are NOT IT decisions (e.g. based on IT resource availability) but business decisions (strategic fit, funding, ..)

Good luck
Thomas

These sort of questions are fun because often a solution in one domain, has a parallel application in others...

A portfolio is a tool used to aggregate data allowing it to be analyzed in a specific context to provide actionable information. Many software programs do that too, it's just different information analyzed for a different purpose. The point? Why not implement your management strategy like you would a software product?

When you are meeting with the stakeholders as Kiron describes, you are getting the perspective of the customer and either explicitly or implicitly developing user stories.

You can build a MVP to demonstrate the value by collecting one or two important data points on each manufacturing project like cost/benefit ratio and/or other intended benefits. Now you can demonstrate some value to using a portfolio to the customers (your employer). You may have to guide them as to why comparing ROI can help make business decisions if it is not clear.

Now once you are demonstrating value, you can prioritize how to provide more value in an organized approach. Since your customers are new to why portfolios are helpful, an iterative approach is ideal. They don't know what they want yet, so their priorities will change, 100% guaranteed.

Once you have a basic framework for your portfolio that is delivering value, create a rough plan for how to deliver additional value in right-sized increments, and Plan Do Study Act.

Sound familiar to SW delivery?