In ITIL, Portfolio management is part of the service strategy, which reflects the importance of the process. Portfolio Management is very important to have a centralized place where all services starting from conceptualization till retirement are listed.
Most importantly, through the service pipeline, we study the services business cases, decide on what services to offer, and charter the service part of which, is the resources allocation.
Portfolio management provides a holistic vision of resource allocation to upper management. This is very important to make sure that resource, including people, allocation is optimized and aligned with the organization strategy.
On the other hand, it’s also necessary for resources themselves. It gives them the confidence that organization management is clear about the work taking place. They will hear no discouraging questions like “what are you working on?”.
Portfolio management gives resources the feeling that things are well-studied and aligned with the organization goals, which increases their sense of the value they’re delivering, and hence their morale.
Being centralized process, it assures that technical teams do not become a predator to new initiatives! Business units,whether internal or external, can easily exhaust any technical team with their request. Shouldn’t all of them be done, the business units get frustrated and reflect this on the technical team, directly or indirectly through the organization management. Such situation can quickly burn out the technical team morale.
That said, if you don’t have Service Portfolio Management, reconsider this, it has more benefits than what your can imagine.
Ala' Yasin Abuhijleh 