IT Puts Its House in Order, for the Sake of Business

Computerworld - PALM DESERT, Calif. — As IT executives seek to transform their operations into true corporate assets that can help grow the business at their companies, many are finding that first they must impose much tighter controls over their often vast and unwieldy portfolios of technology projects.

Numerous speakers and other attendees at Computerworld's seventh annual Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference here last week said they are moving quickly to put in place new portfolio management policies and tools. The goal is to ensure that their IT staffs are doing work that meets business priorities and can generate the highest possible return on investment.

For example, Randall Mott, who took over as CIO at Hewlett-Packard Co. last year, said in a keynote speech that he found at least 10 major IT budgets that were separate from one another, plus a variety of "shadow" IT activities that were going on outside those budgets. Altogether, HP had about 1,200 IT projects in the works, he said.

Now he plans to cut the number of projects that are typically under way at the company to 500 or so through more rigorous planning and portfolio management. As part of the new approach, HP's executive council will meet with Mott and other IT managers every 60 days to prioritize major projects, check the status of ongoing work and consider proposed initiatives.

The changes were designed partly to "eliminate costly excursions on unworkable projects," Mott said. "We're not going to try to do as many things [at once] as we tried to do before. We're going to try to do things faster and better." He added that it took six months to come up with an initial ranking of projects by priority, a process that was finalized with the executive council late last month.

Mott has also put all IT and telecommunications work under a single budget and pushed his staff to develop consistent IT metrics, among other steps.

Al-Noor Ramji, CIO at BT Group PLC Image Credit: Asa Mathat

Al-Noor Ramji, CIO at BT Group PLC in London, is likewise reinventing how the telecommunications vendor manages its IT operations in an effort to make his 15,000-member team more agile and responsive to customers.

Ramji, who joined BT 18 months ago, said he has cut the number of in-house IT initiatives from about 4,300 individual projects to 29 development programs that are reviewed quarterly with corporate executives.