IT Project Selection: Politics, Experience and good Friends

Selecting the right IT projects is increasingly important for many organizations. Project portfolio managers play a key role during project selection, but even though they have a great impact on the selection process, we have little knowledge about how they decide which projects to recommend for initiation. Most of the research on project selection is normative, suggesting new methods, but available empirical studies indicate that many methods are seldom used in practice. This paper addresses the issue by providing increased understanding of IT project selection practice, thereby facilitating the development of methods that better fit current practice. The study is based on naturalistic decision-making theory and interviews with experienced project portfolio managers who, when selecting projects, primarily rely on political skills, experience and personal networks rather than on formal IT project-selection methods, and these findings point to new areas for developing new methodological support for IT project selection.