IT Project Portfolio Management; Challenges faced by Danish municipalities

Abstract. Increasing the organizational benefits from IT projects is a key concern in most organizations. The use of Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is generally recommended by consultants (e.g. Kaplan 2005) and researchers (e.g. De Reyck et al 2005) as one way of increasing the organizational benefits from IT investments. This article reports from an action research project aiming at understanding and improving IT PPM practices in Danish municipalities, thereby contributing to the general body of knowledge concerning PPM of IT projects. Our findings suggest that the participating organizations might benefit from a structured approach as suggested by the literature (e.g. Kaplan 2005), but also that the prescriptive PPM literature in some areas is too simplistic when compared to the reality faced by the participating practitioners. Especially, our research suggests that different PPM elements should be prioritized differently depending on the IT-management maturity and role of IT in the organization.