A global survey of 401 senior executives finds that while nearly all (95%) agree that strategic portfolio management (SPM) is critical for business success, only 44% indicate they have an effective SPM process in place today.
Conducted by the market research firm Dimensional Insights on behalf of Broadcom, the survey also finds that only 19% have access to all necessary data required to ensure projects are properly prioritized and aligned with business objectives and only 56% indicated they can actually establish a return on investment (ROI) for IT projects.
Well over half (59%) admit reprioritization is happening on more than half of their projects due to poor resource forecasting, the survey also finds.
Top SPM obstacles identified include operational silos (48%), shifting priorities (44%), an inability to secure necessary resources (39%), and politics (36%), the survey finds.
Brian Nathanson, head of the product management for the Clarity arm of Broadcom, said the survey results make it clear that there is a dichotomy between how leaders want to manage IT and everyday reality. Much of the reason that gap exists is because the data required to holistically manage IT projects is simply too distributed to effectively use, he added.
However, hope continues to spring eternal in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Nearly all survey respondents (99%) indicate that key AI-enabled capabilities will help them optimize and better manage SPM portfolios. The top AI capabilities sought are SPM optimization, capacity planning, and alerts to issues that are either current and predicted. More than half (57%) expect significant time savings from AI, with 30% or more suggesting savings will occur just within the SPM planning cycle.
The primary reasons cited for applying AI to SPM are to align investments with business objectives (49%), establish and track more complex ROI metrics (47%) and establish corporate-wide governance (45%).
However, only 56% said they are confident they can establish an ROI for an AI project and well under half can track total cost of ownership (44%) or individual project allocation (43%).
Overall, 22% have some AI functionality for SPM today, with 60% somewhere in the planning or selection phase of adoption. The biggest AI obstacles encountered are lack of expertise (40%), security (39%), lack of resources (38%), compliance (38%) and data governance (37%), the survey finds.
Ultimately, IT and finance teams will need to collaborate to realize SPM ambitions, said Nathanson. While AI will certainly make it simpler to achieve that goal, AI also tends to for better or worse amplify whatever it discovers, he added. As such, many IT teams might soon discover that AI has done more to exacerbate existing issues than necessarily resolve them, noted Nathanson. In fact, only 14% said they would trust an AI-generated recommendation for SPM without some type of human review.
In the meantime, IT teams would be well-advised to start identifying all the places where the data needed to make better-informed decisions for AI agents and humans alike is disconnected. After all, AI agents that might be able to augment IT professionals tasked with managing IT projects are only going to be useful if they have access to all the relevant data needed to make a valid recommendation.
