Study advocates wider use of project portfolio management controls

Lero researchers in NUI Galway (from left) Dr. Kieran Conboy, Dr. Orla O’Dwyer and
Roger Sweetman. Photo: Aengus McMahon

Many companies and public sector organisations in Ireland are wasting millions of Euro through failure to select the right ICT (Information, Communications & Technology) projects to implement, according to new research from Lero, the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre.

The study* which was carried out by Lero researchers at NUI Galway, finds that organisations not only make poor choices of projects but also struggle to deliver those projects effectively in a multi-project environment. The study finds that this has massive implications for Irish business. The global cost of failed ICT projects estimated at being anything between $3 and $6 trillion**.

Dr. Orla O’Dwyer, Dr. Kieran Conboy and Roger Sweetman at Lero in NUI Galway conducted extensive qualitative research across a number of Irish based SME, multinational and public sector organisations. The private sector firms employed between 45 and 4,500 employees. Lero research is supported by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and Enterprise Ireland.

According to Dr. Orla O’Dwyer, Research Fellow, NUI Galway: “The findings suggest  that project implementation can be often down to who can convince and argue the best rather than what is best for the organisation in terms of business benefits, value, revenue and customer support.”

The study advocates wider implementation of project portfolio management processes. “While organisations increasingly recognise the importance of project management to avoid waste, the implementation of project portfolio management is less appreciated. While project management is about ‘doing things right’, portfolio management is about ‘doing the right things’,” commented Dr. O’Dwyer.

Stressing the importance of project portfolio management she pointed out that between 40 and 60% of IT programs fail to meet budget, deadlines and expectations and are in many cases are very much underutilised when implemented.

Dr. Kieran Conboy, Dean of the College of Business Public Policy and Law at NUI Galway, Principal Investigator of the SFI funded research, and co author of the study, warned that failure to select and implement the correct ICT projects can have catastrophic effects. He said that organisations face multiple challenges when managing their IT project portfolios.

“The most important of these are alignment of the project portfolio with strategic objectives, the prioritisation and selection of the right projects, managing inter-dependencies across projects, resource allocation, release management and communication.”

According to Dr Conboy, the ability to maintain agile and lean project portfolios in today’s complex, dynamic, and pressurised environment is particularly challenging. “The industry is getting to grips with agile and lean project management, but scaling this up to a portfolio with hundreds of projects is much more difficult to achieve.”

Doctoral researcher Roger Sweetman added:  “Organisations often focus on the top down communication of goals, but in a portfolio environment, regular contact upward and between projects is just as important.”

He added, “Our study promotes the development of a portfolio road map, reviewed regularly, that includes current and future projects so that all stakeholders are aware of future plans and how projects fit together. We also encourage the use of business cases containing ample supporting evidence such as projected ROI (Return on Investment) and NPV (Net Present Value) to aid in the selection of the most appropriate projects for the portfolio.”