Supporting Business Initiatives: Ensuring Success through IT Investments

Achieving Goals: Key Considerations for IT Initiatives

Question

An IT investment review board wants to ensure that IT will be able to support business initiatives.

Each initiative is comprised of several interrelated IT projects.

Which of the following would help ensure that the initiatives meet their goals?

Answers

Explanations

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A. B. C. D.

C.

https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/proven-project-portfolio-management-process-8503

The IT investment review board is responsible for overseeing IT investments to ensure they align with the organization's business objectives. The board wants to ensure that IT can support business initiatives, which are comprised of multiple IT projects that are interrelated.

To ensure that the initiatives meet their goals, several actions can be taken, and the options provided in the answer choices are as follows:

A. Verification of initiatives against the architecture: This means that the IT initiatives are compared against the enterprise architecture to ensure that they are aligned with the organization's overall technology strategy. This helps ensure that the IT projects are consistent with the organization's long-term goals and objectives.

B. Review of the business case for each initiative: This involves examining the business case for each initiative to ensure that it is viable, justifiable, and aligns with the organization's overall goals and objectives. A business case outlines the expected benefits, costs, and risks associated with an initiative, and this information is critical in determining whether the initiative is worth pursuing.

C. Establishment of portfolio management: This involves creating a portfolio of IT initiatives and managing them as a group to ensure that they align with the organization's goals and objectives. Portfolio management allows the IT investment review board to prioritize initiatives based on their potential impact on the organization and to ensure that resources are allocated efficiently.

D. Review of project management methodology: This involves examining the methodology used to manage the IT projects that make up each initiative. The review board will want to ensure that the methodology used is appropriate for the project's complexity and scope and that it is being followed effectively to ensure that the project is delivered on time, within budget, and to the required quality standards.

All of the answer choices can help ensure that the initiatives meet their goals, but some are more directly related to the task than others. In this case, the most relevant options are A and B.

Option A is important because it ensures that the initiatives align with the organization's overall technology strategy, which is critical to ensure that the initiatives support the organization's business objectives.

Option B is also important because it ensures that each initiative is justified, and it aligns with the organization's overall goals and objectives. This is essential to ensure that the initiative will deliver the expected benefits and that resources are not wasted on poorly conceived initiatives.

Option C is also important, but it is more focused on managing the portfolio of initiatives than ensuring that each individual initiative meets its goals. Portfolio management is critical for ensuring that the organization's resources are being allocated effectively, but it is less directly related to the task at hand.

Option D is less directly related to the task because it focuses on project management methodology rather than the overall alignment of the initiatives with the organization's goals and objectives. However, project management methodology is still important for ensuring that individual projects are delivered on time, within budget, and to the required quality standards.