FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Organisations Making Progress with IT Management and Governance but Still Face Significant Challenges according to
Borland Survey
Companies lack best practices and technology to mature key IT process areas, especially project and portfolio management
Wellington, 1 September 2006 — According to global survey results released by Borland Software (NASDAQ: BORL),
organisations are making progress with IT management and governance (ITM) but still fall short in key process areas like project management, portfolio management, demand management and
resource management.
Borland New Zealand country manager Chris Gray said IT professionals still found a relatively low level of maturity in
how organisations define project goals, allocate resources and, most importantly, measure overall success of their IT
portfolio.
The Borland Survey, which covered 125 organisations in 29 countries including Australia and New Zealand, found
companies’ ITM efforts are frequently challenged by the inability to integrate their systems for managing application development –
which contain vital data and assets – with their overall ITM processes. It reported 87% of respondents saying their organisation has been either ineffective or only somewhat
effective at integrating their overall ITM process with their Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform and tools.
Project and Portfolio Management Show Promise but Fall Short
Responses from participants in the study indicated they are making positive strides in portions of project management,
such as their ability to plan and track project execution. However, more probing questions show that they still lack
many of the rigorous processes established by industry best practices.
For example, more than 80% of respondents said they have some formal launch process for new projects and almost three
quarters believe their organisation effectively or somewhat effectively measures and manages project execution. However,
only 22% reported that their organisation either effectively or very effectively uses a project plan for managing
projects, and only 17% have either rigorous or very rigorous project plans, which include base lining and estimating
schedule, cost and business impact.
In terms of portfolio management, which enables companies to collectively analyze costs, benefits and risks of proposed
and in-progress IT projects and other investments, the data clearly showed that most organisations are unsuccessful at
implementing an effective portfolio management process.
- Only 20% of respondents agreed their organisations monitor portfolio progress and coordinate across inter-dependent
projects.
- Only 9% reported their organisation very clearly defined goals and decision criteria for each segment within the
portfolio, while 46% had no defined goals, only defined decision criteria.
- When it comes to measuring performance of the overall IT portfolio, the majority of respondents agreed their
organisation has no business impact assessment for completed projects, and success is measured only at the project level
based on performance against schedule and budget. Just 2% felt their organisation was very effective at measuring
performance of the overall portfolio.
“IT leaders understand the value of a balanced portfolio aligned with business objectives, but most lack a well-defined
and consistent process for managing the origination, evaluation, and execution of IT investments,” Mr Gray said.
“Portfolio management enables IT to make fact-based investment decisions in unison with business stakeholders, thus
ensuring alignment, improving visibility, and shifting the burden of investment decisions from the CIO to all
stakeholders.”
Demand Management and Resource Management
Similar to the results from the areas of project management and portfolio management, assessment results for demand
management and resource management showed some progress but room for significant improvement. Demand management, which
establishes processes for gathering and managing requests for IT resources, is a critical step toward identifying
opportunities, managing the IT pipeline, and driving consensus on the best investments.
- Two-thirds of respondents believe their organisation has a somewhat effective process for collecting and managing new
projects and major change requests. They agreed that certain request types have assigned owners, but requests are
communicated via multiple channels and they lack a systematic mechanism for tracking them.
- Over half of respondents believe their organisation is somewhat rigorous in collecting sufficient information to
properly respond, prioritize, and analyze requests. More than one third of respondents felt theirs was not at all
rigorous.
Responses in the area of resource management, which involves the processes and technologies used to manage the people
related to technology investments, showed that one-third believe their organisation does not effectively allocate
resources to projects. Other notable highlights include:
- Only 6% of respondents said their organisations’ personnel capacity is regularly analyzed against current and future
resource needs, putting in place specific plans are made to address gaps, including training, hiring and outsourcing.
- Nearly 20% of respondents reported that their organisations are not detailed when it comes to tracking the time spent
by project team members. Many of these do no time tracking.
“These findings show most organisations have an enormous opportunity to improve how they are approaching and executing
on key process areas related to IT management and governance.
“The most successful organisations are taking a holistic view of focusing, managing, and measuring their IT efforts with
an integrated combination of best practice processes, training and technology. Unfortunately, most organisations today
still aren’t taking this approach,” Mr Gray said.
About The Borland ITM Solution
Borland offers a complete, personalized IT management and governance solution to help organisations achieve IT business
alignment, increase visibility and control over IT projects and investments, improve execution with more effective
resource utilization and manage regulatory compliance. The solution combines Borland’s process improvement and skills
training services with Borland Tempo™, packaged and delivered in an integrated way that can help IT organisations manage
their investments, projects and resources more efficiently and cost effectively. The Borland ITM solution links top-down, business-driven decision making (IT governance) with bottom-up, day-to-day IT execution (IT
management). It includes support for demand management, portfolio management, project management, resource management,
financial management, and asset management.
About Borland New Zealand
The parent company Borland Software Corporation (NASDAQ: BORL) was founded in 1983 and is the global leader in
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions. The company provides the software and services that align the people,
process, and technology required to deliver better enterprise software. It is committed to open standards and is
platform neutral supporting both .NET and J2EE. Borland New Zealand is headquartered in Wellington and is led by Country
Manager Chris Gray. For more information visit www.borland.com/anz/
APPLICATION LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT (ALM) SOLUTIONS
Borland addresses end-to-end software delivery lifecycle with platform solutions for each role in the lifecycle process
to define, design, develop and test critical software.
Borland® Tempo™ is a complete, collaborative IT Management and Governance system. It is the cornerstone of the
personalized Borland IT Management & Governance Solution and delivers measurable business benefit by supporting a tailored people, process and technology
approach that can be incrementally adopted.
Borland® Caliber® is a breakthrough solution allowing business and IT to collaboratively discover, define, and manage
software requirements through the software delivery process.
Borland® Together® technologies take applications from requirements to code bridging the gap between business and IT
organisations through a common set of visual best-of-breed modeling languages.
Borland StarTeam® 2005 provides a complete range of software change management and configuration management solutions
designed to meet the needs of all development teams according to size, geographical distribution, and work style.
Borland's Silk suite of software quality management products include automated tools for test management; functional
testing; load, stress and performance testing; and application performance management.
ENDS