Patent Grant
7734489
© 2003-2005 ProSight, Ltd. A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever. 37 CFR § 1.71(d).
The present invention relates to the field of information management. More specifically, the present invention relates to management of Information Technology (IT) investments.
Ever since the invention of computer, enterprises, business or otherwise, have used computers to improve the productivity of their workers and efficiency of their business operations. In the beginning, enterprises tended to focus in a handful of high priority operation areas, such as financial management, general ledger, payroll and so forth. While these projects were often important, and the investments were not insignificant, the investment often represented only a small portion of the enterprises' investment in infrastructure or research and development, and the overall success of the enterprises was not perceived to be critically dependent on these projects. Accordingly, except perhaps for periodic briefing for management of the organizational units that were directly impacted, senior management were seldom involved, and management of these projects were typically relegated to data processing professionals, and managed in an ad hoc manner.
Over time, continuing advances in computer and other related technology, such as networking and telecommunication, have made it economically as well as technically feasible to make available computing power to virtually every single worker of an enterprise, and support virtually every aspect of an enterprise's operations. As a result, the number as well as the type of applications have broaden, from individual worker productivity, such as word processing, email, and the like, to mission critical operations, such as reservation and flight scheduling in the case of the airline industry. The typical size and scope of many of these applications have also increased. In fact, not only the success of increasing number of conventional business enterprises are increasingly dependent on the success of their IT projects, we have new business enterprises, such as Internet access providers, Internet portals, e-Commerce companies, emerging that are made possible by information technology, which otherwise would not have existed.
With the increase in significance as well as in amount of investment, increasingly senior management of these enterprises are actively involved in the management of their enterprises' investment in IT. Unfortunately, while the significance and the investment in IT have skyrocketed in recent years, little advances have been made in the area of managing IT. Project managers, mid-level managers as well as senior executives continue to rely on a hodgepodge of non-integrated or poorly integrated individual software applications such as spreadsheet and project management applications.
Thus, increasingly there are interest and desire in having automated tools to assist management of all levels to manage these ever more critical IT projects.
A method and apparatus to facilitate management of IT investments includes, in one embodiment, storing data associated with performance metrics of a number of information technology (IT) projects, generating a number of scorecards for a number of IT portfolios, using the stored data, with each scorecard showing where IT projects of an IT portfolio stand on the performance metrics, and each IT portfolio having a subset of the IT projects. The method/apparatus further includes generating one or more investment maps of the IT portfolios, using also the stored data, with each investment map showing at least where a subset of the IT portfolios stand on a number of performance metrics. The method/apparatus further includes facilitating navigation from an investment map to a corresponding one of the scorecards for a selected IT portfolio by a user of the investment map through selection of a representation of the IT portfolio.
In another embodiment, the method/apparatus further includes generating a number of dashboards for the IT projects, using also the stored data, with each dashboard graphically illustrating one or more aspects of at least one IT project. The method/apparatus further includes facilitating navigation from a scorecard to a corresponding one of the dashboards for a selected IT project by a user of the scorecard through selection of a representation of the IT project.
Additional aspects and advantages will be apparent from the following detailed description of preferred embodiments, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.
The present invention will be described by way of exemplary embodiments, but not limitations, illustrated in the accompanying drawings in which like references denote similar elements, and in which:
a-3c illustrate the dashboard, the scorecard and the investment map of
a-4c illustrate the relevant operational flows of the dashboard generator/viewer, the scorecard generator/viewer, and the investment map generator/viewer of
a-5b illustrate additional relevant operational flows of the investment map generator/viewer and the scorecard generator/viewer of
In the following description, various aspects of the present invention will be described. However, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the present invention may be practiced with only some or all aspects of the present invention. For purposes of explanation, specific numbers, materials and configurations are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. However, it will also be apparent to one skilled in the art that the present invention may be practiced without the specific details. In other instances, well known features are omitted or simplified in order not to obscure the present invention.
Parts of the description will be presented in terms of operations performed by a computer system, using terms such as data, flags, bits, values, characters, strings, numbers and the like, consistent with the manner commonly employed by those skilled in the art to convey the substance of their work to others skilled in the art. As well understood by those skilled in the art, these quantities take the form of electrical, magnetic, or optical signals capable of being stored, transferred, combined, and otherwise manipulated through mechanical and electrical components of the computer system; and the term computer system include general purpose as well as special purpose data processing machines, systems, and the like, that are standalone, adjunct or embedded.
Various operations will be described as multiple discrete steps in turn, in a manner that is most helpful in understanding the present invention, however, the order of description should not be construed as to imply that these operations are necessarily order dependent. In particular, these operations need not be performed in the order of presentation.
Referring now
For the illustrated embodiment, project data 102 are stored in tables 202 of a relational database, with each table storing a subset of the data (in columns) for a subset of the projects (in rows). The data may be organized into the various tables in any one of a number of application dependent manner, taking into consideration the number projects, the number of performance metrics as well as other factors. In alternate embodiments, project data 102 may also be stored employing other data organization techniques, including but limited to flat files, hierarchical databases and the like. In one embodiment, historic data are also stored and maintained for some or all of the metrics for which data are being stored. In one embodiment, user annotations for all or selected ones of the metrics are also stored.
In one embodiment, the data to be stored, and whether historical and/or annotations are to be stored, are user defined. The user definition may be provided through any one of a number of “input dialogues” known in the art.
a-3c illustrate a dashboard, a scorecard, and an investment map of
In a preferred one of the embodiments, a project manager may select the subject matters (i.e. the projects and their performance metrics/categories) to be graphically depicted, the graphical depictions to be employed, as well as the manner in which the graphical depictions are to be presented. These selections may be specified by the project manager through any one of a number of “selection dialogues” known in the art.
As described earlier, scorecard 124 is designed to assist a portfolio manager in managing the portfolio of IT projects he/she is responsible for. As shown in
In one embodiment, scorecards 124 may be used to present the status of portfolios of portfolios (as opposed to projects) instead. But, for ease of understanding, the remaining description will primarily focus on scorecards 124 being used to present the status of portfolios of projects.
Similar to dashboard 122, in a preferred one of the embodiments, a portfolio manager may select the projects of a portfolio and the performance indicators of the projects to be included, the manner the performance indicators are to be “aggregated”, whether any cross project composite measures are to be computed, the manner in which the cross project composite measures are to be computed, as well as the manner in which the measurements are to be presented. These selections may too be specified by the portfolio manager through any one of a number of “selection dialogues” known in the art.
As also described earlier, investment maps 126 are designed to assist an IT executive in managing IT investments of his/her enterprise. As shown in
In one embodiment, the technology type of each portfolio is characterized by the portfolio manager as being evolutionary in nature, or instrumental in establishing a new computing platform or technologically transforming in nature. In one embodiment, the characterization may be accomplished through quantified indices (which in turn are employed to generate the normalized x-coordinates). Similarly, the risk of each portfolio is characterized by the portfolio manager as being high, medium or low. In one embodiment, the characterization may also be accomplished through quantified indices (which in turn are employed to generate the normalized y-coordinates). In like manner, a portfolio manager also specifies how the size of a portfolio is to be measured, e.g. in terms of total dollars budgeted, total staffing, total number of lines of code to be written and so forth, as well as how “soundness” of a portfolio is to be measured, e.g. by the number of critical performance indicators in an “alert” state, or by the number of projects having at least one critical performance indicators in the “alert” state, or both. These specifications may too be made by the portfolio managers through any one of a number of “selection dialogues” known in the art.
In alternate embodiments, investment maps 126 may depict the status of a selection of IT portfolios relative to other performance metrics/categories (as opposed to risk, technology type etc.). Again, the performance metrics/categories to be referenced in the depiction of the status of IT portfolios may be user specified, through any one of a number of known “specification dialogues” known in the art.
a-4c illustrate the relevant generation operational flows of the dashboard generator/viewer, the scorecard generator/viewer, and investment map generator/viewer of
As illustrated by
As illustrated by
a-5b illustrate the relevant viewing operational flows of the scorecard generator/viewer and investment map generator/viewer of
As illustrated by
Server 602 is intended to represent one or more servers coupled to each other through a local or a wide area network. In one embodiment, dashboard, scorecard and investment map generator/viewer 112-116 may execute exclusively on server 602 with the results transmitted to display on computing devices 604-608 through networking fabric 610. In other embodiments, part or all of dashboard, scorecard and investment map generator/viewer 112-116 may be executed on computing devices 604-608 instead. Further, there may be more than one executive computing device 604, as well as having computing devices that serve as a computing device with more than one role, e.g. for an IT executive as well as a portfolio manager or a project manager. Networking fabric 610 is intended to represent a wide range of interconnected private and public networks, each constituted with networking equipment such as gateways, switches, routers and the like, such as the Internet.
Thus, a novel method and apparatus for facilitating management of IT investment has been described. While the present invention has been described in terms of the above illustrated embodiments, those skilled in the art will recognize that the invention is not limited to the embodiments described. The present invention can be practiced with modification and alteration within the spirit and scope of the appended claims. For example, in addition to the above described dashboard, scorecard and investment map, the present invention may also be practiced with a “management notebook” encapsulating the various project data for a project manager, and navigationally coupling e.g. the dashboards to these “management notebooks”. The description is thus to be regarded as illustrative instead of restrictive on the present invention.
It will be obvious to those having skill in the art that many changes may be made to the details of the above-described embodiments without departing from the underlying principles of the invention. The scope of the present invention should, therefore, be determined only by the following claims.
This is a divisional application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/459,113, filed Jun. 10, 2003, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/560,670, filed Apr. 27, 2000, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,578,004, all incorporated by reference.
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| Number | Date | Country | |
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| Child | 11318379 | US |
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| Parent | 09560670 | Apr 2000 | US |
| Child | 10459113 | US |
