Connecting the Dots

Introduction

A guidebook for aligning technology-intensive initiatives with corporate intentions.

• Alignment theme resonates: Offers a very convincing case that the 'alignment' portfolio management method is an excellent way to manage strategic planning and implementation.
• Pragmatic: A practical approach that works. This is a complete and credible guide that contains original tools and new strategies.
• The right cases: Offers lively case examples from the authors' first-hand experience that aptly support the book's premise and game plan.
• Authoritative team: Benko runs the e-business practice at Deloitte and McFarlan is a distinguished HBS professor and well-known thought leader on technology management.
• Timing: This book comes at a time when the topic of discussion in IT circles centers on minimizing spending and maximizing the effectiveness of existing technology-related projects. The book offers ways to achieve the right balance.         

About the book

Organizations are struggling for greater return on their multibillion-dollar technology and project-related investments. Individual projects may be useful, but when examined collectively, they often work at cross-purposes, duplicate each other's efforts, or aim for obsolescing business objectives. And all are competing for scarce resources. In today's earnings-driven business environment, companies must look to their portfolios to better deliver on objectives and propel the organization forward.

Based on their experience with a variety of companies, authors Cathleen Benko and distinguished professor F. Warren McFarlan have developed an alignment approach that better connects an organization's project portfolio to its corporate objectives in a manner responsive to today's unpredictable environment.

Connecting the Dots provides a scalable framework and practical tools for better aligning a company's: (1) project portfolio with its objectives; (2) individual projects with each other; and (3) portfolio and objectives with the volatile environment. Better-aligned companies enhance business/technology performance by increasing shareholder value and confidence and improving the portfolio's return on investment. This in-the-trenches guidebook helps companies capture this latent value while building a more adaptive organization.

AUTHORBIO: Cathleen Benko is Braxton's Global e-Business Leader. F. Warren McFarlan is the Senior Associate Dean and Albert H. Gordon Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.