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Success in the information systems (IS) project domain is elusive despite extensive research on the topic. Governance is seen as the greatest contributor to project success. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and report on the current perceptions and implementation of information technology (IT) governance within IS portfolio management to develop a sub-framework to guide practitioners. This sub-framework forms part of a grand IS project, programme and portfolio governance framework of which this study forms a contributing part.

The researchers followed a mixed-methods approach through utilising Q-methodology and inverted factor analysis.

The results provided a sub-framework recommending specific IT governance practices to be applied to IS portfolios. The recommendations are categorised as activities to be maintained, enhanced and/or implemented.

The research only had participants from South African organisations and as such cannot be reliably extrapolated to other regions.

The resultant sub-framework provides stakeholders and practitioners involved in IS portfolios an opportunity to examine their own approaches and be confronted with possibilities in their portfolio management activities. Further research to be conducted includes creating a grand framework to address the linkages between portfolio, programme and project management as it relates to IT governance on various strategic levels.

Despite an obvious connection, business process improvement and business process management (BPM) capability development have been studied intensely, but in isolation. The authors thus aim to make the case for the research located at the intersection of both streams. The authors thereby focus on the integrated planning of business process improvement and BPM capability development as this is where, in the authors’ opinion, both streams have the closest interaction. The authors refer to the research field located at the intersection of business process improvement and BPM capability development as process project portfolio management. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors structure the field of process project portfolio management drawing from extant knowledge related to BPM, project portfolio management, and performance management. The authors also propose a research agenda in terms of exemplary research questions and research methods.

The proposed structure shows which business objects and interactions should be considered when engaging in process project portfolio management. The research agenda contains exemplary questions structured along the intersections of BPM, project portfolio management, and performance management.

This paper’s main limitation is that it reflects the authors’ individual viewpoints based on experiences of several industry projects and prior research.

This paper addresses a neglected research field, opens up new avenues for interdisciplinary BPM research, and contributes a novel perspective to the ongoing discussion about the future of BPM.

The purpose of the paper is to present a theoretical framework and the preliminary results of a research on how to assess information technology (IT) investments so as to deliver maximum business value.

To see whether IT projects fit strategy, the Strategy Map provides a framework for defining the portfolio value and data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to measure the efficiency of project portfolios. Subsequently, an application that illustrates the value of the framework is described.

The authors offer a framework that integrates the Strategy Map and IT project portfolio management (PPM) and suggest that this conceptual framework will allow an organization to enhance the value of IT investments.

This paper is supported by a case study using secondary data only.

The suggested method could help CEOs to understand the interactions between projects and strategy and thus supports decision making to prioritize and track IT investments. The paper illustrates how the proposed framework is applied. It also provides the basis for further research.

By explicitly linking IT investment with organizational goals, this approach produces results that differ from those of previous studies and provides a strategy-based approach to PPM.

The purpose of this study is to present an empirical framework for changes, communication and team restructuring developed through a substantive theory that defines the relationships between Agile adoption and organizational strategies in the Brazilian marketplace, providing assertive propositions.

The research analysed five case studies of private companies in the Brazilian market, adopting the grounded theory (GT) method to examine the relationships between the categories. There was consistency in the reality of 22 participatory interviews with experts in Agile in the five case studies. The excellent integration between the chosen methodological approach and the organizations' characteristics reinforces a strategy focused on mixed methods.

As a result, the authors deploy an empirical framework, displaying new strategies that generate structural changes, obtaining Agile information technology (IT) project portfolio management (PPM) practices and strategies with superior performance. The necessary responses through organizational structural changes are observed, making it possible to notice changes in routines and contingencies.

Some limitations should be pointed out for this study. The case studies were carried out in private companies in Brazil, and cultural aspects must be considered if one wants to generalize. Furthermore, to underline the effects of time, a longitudinal study would have to be employed to improve the interpretation of the results. Another limitation applies to the framework proposed in our study and its reality-simplifying nature. Models and theories with these visible generic characteristics compromise understanding specific situations.

The authors strongly recommend that teams focus on communication among stakeholders to increase the ability to adopt Agile and create valuable knowledge inside the organizations, architecting process innovation.

The forged strategic Agile substantive theory contributes to the competitive Brazilian IT company departments. The need for velocity in organizing teams, accomplishing changes and efficient communication challenges connecting value creation with project results.

This study aims to develop a new integrated decision-making framework specifically designed to address complexity and uncertainty for project portfolio management. It particularly focuses on managing portfolios in a post-merger context. The paper portrays a normative and prescriptive approach to effectively creating a well-balanced project portfolio in a post-merger scenario.

This study introduces hyper-project portfolio frame as a prospective methodology for evaluating post-merger portfolios. The proposed method especially addresses the challenges associated with integration following a merger.

Hyper-project portfolio frame provides fundamental leaps in post-merger project portfolios. The frame gives opportunities to check consistency with policy, organizational scalability, flexibility and product diversity. It also underpins achieving the strategic objectives of mergers and acquisitions (M&As).

The literature synthesis is approached from an interpretative standpoint. The research incorporates discussions and comparative studies from the relevant literature and introduces a novel approach. Additionally, new descriptive studies can expand the proposed process-oriented decision-making. Moreover, this research does not consider hostile takeovers.

Nested in content and process-oriented fashion, the frame provides suitable prequalification analysis for portfolios in a post-merger under the concepts of complexity, uncertainty, risk and value.

As public organizations strive for higher e‐government maturity, information technology (IT) Project Portfolio Management (IT PPM) has become a high priority issue. Assuming control is central in IT PPM, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how a Danish local government conducts control in IT PPM. The authors identify control problems and formulate recommendations to address these.

Adopting principles from Engaged Scholarship, the authors have conducted a case study using a wide variety of data collection methods, including 29 interviews, one workshop, and analyses of documents.

It is found that the local government relies vastly on informal control mechanisms and five control problems are identified: weak accountability processes between the political and administrative level; weak accountability between the director level and the IT executives; IT projects established on the basis of incomplete information about internal resources; lack of operational goals to hold IT projects accountable; and no account of actual IT project costs. The authors propose a model for highlighting how more formal control can be implemented and address the identified control problems.

As a single qualitative case study, the results are limited to one organization and subject.

The paper has implications for IT PPM in Danish local governments and similar organizations in other countries. The paper shows that the lack of formal control mechanisms makes accountability between hierarchical levels difficult, which deprives organizations of the opportunity to pursue and display unambiguous value from their e‐government initiatives.

This paper fulfills an identified need to understand how local governments can improve IT PPM.

The purpose of this essay is to illustrate how project management “pull” and AI or analytics technology “push” are likely to result in incremental and disruptive evolution of project management capabilities and practices.

This paper is written as a critical essay reflecting the experience and reflections of the author with many ideas drawn from and extending selected items from project management, artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics literatures.

Neither AI nor sophisticated analytics is likely to elicit hands on attention from project managers, other than those producing AI or analytics-based artifacts or using these tools to create their products and services. However, through the conduit of packaged software support for project management, new tools and approaches can be expected to more effectively support current activities, to streamline or eliminate activities that can be automated, to extend current capabilities with the availability of increased data, computing capacity and mathematically based algorithms and to suggest ways to reconceive how projects are done and whether they are needed.

This essay includes projections of possible, some likely and some unlikely, events and states that have not yet occurred. Although the hope and purpose are to alert readers to the possibilities of what may occur as logical extensions of current states, it is improbable that all such projections will come to pass at all or in the way described. Nonetheless, consideration of the future ranging from current trends, the interplay among intersecting trends and scenarios of future states can sharpen awareness of the effects of current choices regarding actions, decisions and plans improving the probability that the authors can move toward desired rather than undesired future states.

Project managers not involved personally with creating AI or analytics products can avoid mastering detailed skill sets in AI and analytics, but should scan for new software features and affordances that they can use enable new levels of productivity, net benefit creation and ability to sleep well at night.

This essay brings together AI, analytics and project management to imagine and anticipate possible directions for the evolution of the project management domain.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the relevant determinants of IT project decision making and their relevance in corporate practice.

The empiric analysis used in-depth expert interviews (n=18) as method for data collection and qualitative content analysis using evaluative categories for analysis.

Corporate practice is strongly influenced by descriptive decision making. There is only little use of normative decision models in decision making. In corporate practice little use is made of evaluations to analyze achieved project outputs and impacts to improve decision-making practice. This is the result of several evaluation barriers in organizations.

The sample is restricted to IT projects as the experts are responsible for IT project portfolio management. Also, an industry comparison is not included in the study.

The analysis shows that IT project decision making in corporate practice should include results from descriptive decision theory into project decision processes in corporate practice. More effort should be made in challenging project input data which is relevant for project decision making. By systematically including evaluations for relevant projects, the deviations between planned and achieved project impacts offer valuable feedback for estimators and decision makers.

The paper presents detailed analysis on decision variables and their relevance for IT project decision making in corporate practice. Critical aspects of decision making become clear, such as the aspects of evaluation barriers and the need to incorporate descriptive decision-making aspects into corporate decision processes.

This paper proposes selecting a construction project portfolio in the context of a public institution, which makes it possible to assess quantitative and qualitative criteria, thereby meeting the needs of the institution and the existing constraints.

The research design follows a framework using technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) associated with integer linear programming.

The method involves a flow of assessments allowing criteria and weights to be elicited where outcomes are based on the experts' intra-criteria assessment of alternatives and decision-makers' inter-criteria assessment. This is of utmost interest to public organizations, where selections must result in benefits and lower costs, integrating the experts' technical and management perspectives.

Public institutions are characterized by having limited financial and personnel resources for project development despite having a high demand for requests not associated with profits, making it essential to have a framework that enables using multiple criteria to better evaluate the benefits related to these decisions.

The main contributions of this article are: (1) the proposition of a framework for selecting construction project portfolios considering the organization's strategic needs; (2) identifying quantitative and qualitative assessment criteria for project selection; (3) integrating TOPSIS with an optimization process for selecting the construction project portfolios and (4) providing a structured decision process for selecting the portfolio that best represents the interests of the institution within its limited resources and personnel.

The paper responds to calls in recent research for a model that shows how the business case should be used throughout the project's lifetime to achieve sound governance and thereby project success. The aim of the paper is to advance theory about the effective use of the business case.

Besides the processes and information required, the literature identified 43 organizational facilitating factors, structured into 5 categories, which are required for effective use of the business case. To offer a useful model, the authors' approach was to do a factor analysis, based on existing survey data, to reduce the number of facilitators and to validate their categorization.

The findings of the paper were as follows: (1) the classification of the proposed facilitating factors was validated; (2) the number of facilitators needed to ensure that the business case is used effectively was substantially reduced and (3) a “business case effectiveness model” is proposed to clarify the relationship between the organizational facilitating factors, the business case processes and the information required to effectively use the business case.

This is the first time that a business case effectiveness model has been proposed. Besides consolidating business case theory, it can be used to guide people and organizations on simple, affordable ways to improve their use of the business case to achieve sound governance and hence business/information technology project success.