Risk in Information Technology Project Portfolio Management

This study synthesizes previous research on risks in various reference disciplines into integrated typology of risk factors and offers unique propositions for IT project portfolio management. The paper examines and synthesizes research in strategic information systems planning, IT governance, IT project management, financial portfolio management, and product development. The synthesis resulted in an emergent typology of five categories of risk of relevance to the IT project portfolio manager and 13 unique propositions establishing the relationship between specific risk factors and the overall portfolio risk levels. This typology offers a way to analyze portfolio risks through generic categories, simplifying the assessment portfolio risk in the portfolio management process. Both CIOs and portfolio managers could find this research beneficial in their assessment of portfolio risk, portfolio health, and the project selection and review process.