A State Government Agency needed better transparency and control of its portfolios of IT services, applications, infrastructure and projects. The agency partnered with UMT to design and implement a process and tools solution based on UMT 360 and Microsoft Project Server - to drive better investment decisions and deliver more value and efficiency for its customers.

1. Case Study: IT Portfolio Management
Organization Profile:

State and Local Government

>1,500 employees

~$3 billion revenue

>6 million customers
State Agency Drives IT Strategy
and Execution with Transparent
Financial Management
Business Need:
Financial and operational visibility of
the IT portfolios of services,
applications, infrastructure and
projects
A State Government Agency needed better transparency and
control of its portfolios of IT services, applications, infrastructure
and projects. The agency contracted UMT to design and
implement a process and tools solution based on UMT 360 and
Microsoft Project Server - to drive better investment decisions
and deliver more value and efficiency for its customers.
Capabilities Implemented:
 IT Financial Management
 Application Portfolio
Management
Software Used:
 UMT 360
 Microsoft SharePoint
 Microsoft Project Server
 Microsoft Project Professional
 Microsoft Team Foundation
Server
ABOUT UMT CONSULTING
UMT is a recognized provider of
Project Portfolio & Integrated
Portfolio Management solutions and
management consulting best
practices. UMT is Microsoft's
Worldwide PPM Partner of the Year
2013 and has been twice named a
Gartner Cool Vendor in PPM and is
positioned as a Visionary in Gartner's
Integrated IT Portfolio Analysis Magic
Quadrant.
SITUATION
The State Agency contributes several
billion dollars annually to State
revenue. The IT organization at the
agency enables the agency’s business
goals through delivering technology
that gives the general public and State
employees access to the services they
need.
IT is under pressure every year to
deliver a large volume of changes to
services and technology, driven by
new legislation and by the need to
continuously improve its services.
The agency had two goals: better
visibility into all of its IT activities,
assets and associated costs; followed
by improved team capabilities and
improved strategies for planning and
executing.
SOLUTION
1. Assessing the Issues
The agency wanted to improve its
ability to assign costs and benefits to
different types of work and
technology assets, and to enhance the
discussions and decisions with the
business on what to invest in and
when.
The agency had a significant backlog
of work, meaning that demand for
new work and projects exceeded the
ability to supply. Additionally, the
prioritization process used to align the
demand with the agency strategy and
objectives was not meeting the
advancing needs of the agency
workforce.
The aging portfolio of technologies –
primarily applications – was inefficient
to maintain and made it challenging to
reduce the average cost per
transaction.
UMT conducted an assessment of the
current and potential future state of
IT capabilities, using a combination of
surveys, interviews and by studying
artifacts. The assessment covered
organization, people, processes and
tools and data.
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2. Case Study: IT Portfolio Management
2. Building a Roadmap
The agency faced challenges in
managing resources and projects, and in
understanding and rationalizing IT
applications, assets and services. The
recommended approach was to address
the root causes in the long term as well
as address challenged processes in the
near term. For example, what was
initially perceived as a resource and
demand management problem was
found to also relate to the burden of
maintaining the agency’s aging
technology and application portfolio.
UMT worked with the agency to
develop a roadmap that focused on
creating a holistic IT360 perspective for
managing IT as an integrated portfolio
of assets and services as follows:
connecting disparate processes and
managing a single source of reliable
information.
Organize the portfolio into services,
applications, infrastructure and
projects.
UMT used an iterative approach that
gradually matured different capabilities
and ultimately created a solid
foundation for managing the business of
IT:
Roll-up labor cost from projects and
support activities to applications and
infrastructure, with a clear break down
between project work, support work
and administration time.
Design and implement simple,
foundational project portfolio
management processes for the
following: managing intake or demand
for IT from the business; prioritizing
demand; planning and managing
projects; resource planning and time
sheeting.
Link the reporting system to the
general ledger accounts to assure data
integrity, but keep the advantage of
maintaining the information bottom-up.
Create comprehensive analyses and
reports of the IT portfolio with a view
into assets, services, applications,
projects, resources and roles.
Build the complete application
Improve and integrate the application
repository by collecting applications’
lifecycle management process into the
metadata; assessing the applications for
mix, leveraging Microsoft TFS.
Understand IT – bring financial visibility risk, business impact, etc., creating
associations between applications and
into all applications and services and
infrastructure.
organize them into a meaningful
relational structure.
Run IT – make informed investments
and shape maintenance and operations
activities in full alignment with the asset
portfolio strategy.
Transform IT – plan technological
transformation projects based on
business strategy and a deeper
knowledge of the existing systems –not
only their labor and hardware costs, but
also the costs of transactions and their
return on investment.
3. Designing Processes and Tools
in Iterations
The approach was to first address the
processes, and then implement the
improved processes by using better and
more integrated tools. The tools
solution - consisting of UMT 360
software, Microsoft Project Server and
Microsoft Team Foundation Server – has
been named by the agency as
‘OneSource’, reflecting the strategy of
BENEFITS & BUSINESS IMPROVEMENTS
The roadmap developed focused on establishing foundational
project and application portfolio management to create IT
transparency within the first few months. After this successful
start, the agency now has fresh insight into the costs and human
resources assignments across IT, as well as better processes for
prioritizing and executing work. The roadmap goals for the
following two years include:

15% savings across the IT portfolio, through improved
alignment of work with the IT strategic plan, and improved
execution performance driven by process and people
improvements.

Transparency and reliability of actual resource effort and cost
by service, application and project: from a reliable, bottom-up
process.

Better decision-making and control regarding the strategic
targets of IT time and cost (e.g. production support vs.
transformation).

Move towards a transactional model by understanding the cost
and return of transactions.
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