Development and Validation of an Approach for Assessing the Risk and Health of IT Project Portfolios

Many organizations have established IT Project Portfolio Management to effectively manage portfolios of IT projects and balance them with their business strategy. Despite quite significant investments in IT projects and following IT Project Portfolio Management best practices, organizations often fail to actually realize the expected value with their project portfolio. To realize portfolio value now and in the future, a periodic assessment of the so-called health and risks of the IT project portfolio is essential. Several portfolio management standards have been published, but the scientific literature still lacks a theoretically based and practically validated approach for assessing IT project portfolio value in terms of health and risk. This study established such an approach for assessing IT project portfolio value, validated in a multiple-case study. We argue that this approach can support organizations in assessing their IT project portfolio in terms of health and risk, identifying areas for improvement, and thus having better control over realizing portfolio value.