A New Approach to University IT Project Portfolio Management Based on Multi-Criteria Methods and the COBIT 5 Governance Framework

Abstract

Project portfolio management is a major challenge for some organizations. In most organizations, there are a large number of projects active at the same time, some not necessarily delivering value or not aligned with their strategic goals. Also universities face a lot of uncertainties when selecting and prioritizing the projects that make up their portfolio. In addition, the achievement of those who are aligned with the strategy of the university becomes a great challenge. So to ensure good project portfolio management, the implementation of selection and prioritization methods and processes becomes important. For the project portfolio management to be effective, it is necessary to establish a structured method adapted to the needs and strategy of the university. In this context, this paper proposes a method for selecting and prioritizing projects within the framework of the portfolio management dedicated to universities, which can promote harmony between the university's strategy, the needs and the priority objectives for enable better decision-making. This method is based on the processes of the COBIT 5 good practice framework, and on the multi-criteria decision-making methods AHP, TOPSIS and the WSM technique, thus, it proposes seven project selection criteria based on the five axes IT governance strategies and two catalysts derived from COBIT 5 enablers. The evaluation and validation of this method was applied in the portfolio management of the Abdelmalek Essaadi Moroccan University (AUE). The result shows that this proposed method has made it possible to make a better selection and prioritization of the portfolio of projects of Abdelmleek Essaadi University having the most value.