The enormous impact of Information Technology (IT) has led to significant changes in how most organizations operate. The resource demands for both maintaining and enhancing an organization's IT portfolio are insatiablealmost always exceeding the availability of resources. At first, technologists decided what forms of IT to implement and maintain. It wasn't long, however, before organizations realized that these decisions, although requiring a good understanding of the technologies, had to involve senior management from throughout the organization to ensure that the decisions aligned with the organization's strategic and tactical objectives. In practice, a wide range of processes attempt to do this. The results of such processes vary widely because what might be intuitive isn't always effective. For example, assigning weights to criteria and projects and then allocating funds to the highest-ranking projects until available resources are consumed may seem logical, but in fact is far from optimal. This chapter will explore the necessary requirements of a best-practice process for deciding what to include in an organization's IT portfolio.
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