Benefit Evaluation in IT Project Portfolio Management at Austrian Financial Service Providers

IT is a crucial competitive factor for financial service providers. Thus IT and business have to be aligned continuously on a strategic, tactical and operative level. IT investments are usually managed through projects and project portfolios. The evaluation methods and criteria used for decision support have an impact on which projects are implemented and to what extent. In order to manage IT project portfolios based on value and to support strategically aligned IT investment decisions, structured evaluation not only of monetary but also of qualitative benefits is crucial. There exist numerous business benefit evaluation models in scientific literature, but the implementation in practice is problematic. Five Austrian financial service providers are examined to identify the implementation status, challenges and good practices of benefit evaluation in IT project portfolio management. The observations are set in context to current literature. The findings partly constitute new insights and partly reaffirm existing theories or add additional details to them.