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Greetings all, this is my first Wikipedia article (I have been contributing for some time). I know that new articles are scrutinized by many more experienced folks and welcome all feedback. I hope that I have made the case that this merits its own entry.

I do not believe there are any particular religious wars going on in this subject so far, and did strive for NPOV as far as it is relevant.

One question I have: with no financial interest at stake in any of these firms, I would still like to list vendors of portfolio management tooling, as the existence of this market segment is further support for this article's existence. Comments?

Charles T. Betz 16:43, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Why did this get hit with a Deletion - Advert tag? There is no advertising here. Charles T. Betz 16:45, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

If you disagree with it, you may remove it. Yanksox 16:45, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] IT portfolio management vs IT Programme Management

Is there a consensus as to the difference and similarity between portfolio management and programme management from an ICT perspective? Mark G 10:15, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

The key point with portfolio management is that (at its most mature) all IT spend rolls up into appropriate portfolios. If an organization is using programs to achieve this, then there is great similarity. But in most organizations I have worked in, programs are the large scale change initiatives, and there is plenty going on outside them. Charles T. Betz 12:01, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay - so from a governance perspective, this equates to the difference between the Information Systems Steering Group (=Portfolio) and the Information Systems Programme Board (=Programme). The former being (from a best practice perspective) concerned with ICT Planning and Operations and the later being broadly speaking concerned with Deployment, Change and new Projects? Mark G 13:41, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

That works for me. Those terms however are not well established in the US in my experience. Are they from the orange (ICT) book? Charles T. Betz 01:31, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

The ISSG Term appears in the Orange book but is also present in several other UK works some of which pre-date the Orange book, the ISPB isn't an Orange book term but arose around the MSP work that OGC did and was adopted in the mid 90's as a common 'entity' used in many UK public sector IT programmes. Mark G 12:51, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

What do "MSP" and "OGC" mean? DEddy 17:31, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok... found OGC to mean (UK) Office of Government Commerce. This raises a major question... where is THE definitive British to American English translation dictionary for the ITIL effort? DEddy 18:16, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

MSP = Management of Successful Programmes, OGC Best Practice for the management of programmes of work in IT, Construction, BPR etc

Not sure what you mean by definitive British to American English Translation dictionary for ITIL. ITIL is published initially and primarily in UK English, however the ITSMF publishes a version of it's pocket guide with a US English version. As a 'British' originated framework, the lingua franca of ITIL is UK/British English. I'm happy to help and would be eager to clarify any terms that are obfuscated by the atlantic! Mark G 23:27, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Whenever any language is reduced to TLAs (three letter acronyms) it becomes difficult to grok. Specifically in the context of the UK for me MSP first meant Manager Software Products, a "gone-to-the-bit-bucket-in-the-sky" UK software firm begun in the 1970s again from UK government funding/research efforts. One of my first memories of the obfuscatory effect of the Atlantic was hearing someone speaking about "kicks"... which eventually I learned was the Brit pronunciation of CICS.

Is the ITSMF the American equivalent (representative?) of the ITIL? DEddy 00:43, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Nope, see ITSMF, they are an independent international organisation. See IT Infrastructure Library for definitions and explanations of ITIL which is a published framework of best practice. ITIL and ITSMF are the accepted abbreviation of the IT Infrastructure Library and IT Service Management Forum respectively. I have updated the page to clarify this. Mark G 01:10, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure how else you would pronounce "CICS". I don't think the Brits have a monopoly on the pronunciation. I stumbled across this Wiki entry after doing some research on what I termed Application Portfolio Management (APM). Gartner make the clear distinction between APM and Project Portfolio Management. APM is an asset management approach (eg. when do you kill off an old application to give you resources to work on your new stuff) rather than a project portfolio approach. A programme is an aggregration of projects (eg. replacement of mainframe applications) but could managed as large project if needed.--AntonyKimber 02:32, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Brits pronounce CICS "kicks" (what you do to a football). Americans say "see eye see ess", pronouncing the four individual letters. I've never heard how it's pronounced in Oz. DEddy 03:04, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] On use of McFarlan's IT Portfolio Matrix

I'm afraid that I am not familiar with McFarlan's work but the matrix in this article does not appear to be a Project portfolio matrix. It appears to be an application portfolio matrix, useful for categorizing the actual IT asset, not the investment or initiative that generated it. Would it be more appropriate to move the matrix to the Application Portfolio Management article? Nickmalik 07:49, 2 August 2007 (UTC) ??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.93.129.160 (talk) 08:07, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Capability Portfolio Management

I'm not quite sure I like the articles take on "Resource Portfolio Management". It lives with Application and Project, but resources (meaning humans as it is worded right now), may not really be what we're looking for here. Normally three things make an organization capable:

• People (got that covered)
• Processes
• Tools

The current definition in the article of the third leg (RPM) has left out that you're only capable given not just the right people, but also the right processes, and tools. I would argue a re-writing of RPM into Capability Portfolio Management making it include the "how" and "with what" and not just the "who". --Sstaunb (talk) 07:04, 7 April 2008 (UTC)