Roger Sweetman, IT Lecturer at the School of Business and researcher with Lero, the Irish Centre for Software Research, recently addressed the recent 11th International Research Workshop on IT Project Management in Dublin (IRWITPM).
The annual pre-ICIS event, organised by the SIGITPM chapter of the AIS and sponsored by the PMI, brings together leading academics interested in improving project management practices in IT. This is an area that needs research, as an estimated 75% of programmes and portfolios of IT projects fail to meet budget, time, and performance expectations, costing over six trillion dollars a year globally.
Roger spoke about the work he is carrying out to help major Irish organisations with the management of their IT project portfolios. He presented part of his complexity based IT project portfolio management practice framework, which, developed in collaboration with leading complexity scholars and experience portfolio managers, is intended to help organisations manage complex IT portfolios in dynamic environments. Roger explained some of the challenges organisations face when scaling from project to portfolio management and how portfolio managers can learn from nature to build portfolios that are adaptive to their environment, resilient to disruption, and capable of meeting the financial needs of stakeholders.
One of the purposes of the IRWITPM is to ensure that academic research is of greater benefit to industry practitioners. To help achieve this, the event was attended by editors of Project Management Journal who hope to publish many of the papers presented at the workshop.
The IRWITPM was part of a calendar of events around the ICIS conference. ICIS is the largest information systems conference in the world and was brought to Dublin by Lero, of which Maynooth University is a key member.