Managing your RIM program: lessons learned from portfolio management.

• Author: Pierantozzi, Jeff
• Position: Taming Change with Portfolio Management--Unify Your Organization, Sharpen Your Strategy, and Create Measurable Value - Book review

Taming Change with Portfolio Management--Unify Your Organization, Sharpen Your Strategy, and Create Measurable Value

Author: Pat Durbin and Terry Doerscher

Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press

Publication Date: 2010

Length: 352 pages

Price: $24.95 Hardcover

ISBN-13: 978-1-60832-038-7

Source: www.greenleafbookgroup.com

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

One of the most difficult challenges for today's records and information management (RIM) professional is managing the relentless pace of change. Information technology evolves at a breakneck pace, requiring the RIM professional to address new concerns (e.g., cloud computing) even before the preceding concern (e.g., e-mail) has been successfully handled. Further complications stem from regulatory bodies attempting to keep pace with business and technology evolution (e.g., Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and state and local privacy regulations).

Recognizing, prioritizing, and addressing these changes require a carefully designed, disciplined approach to ensure the long-term viability of a RIM program. Many of the key concepts and best practices from the discipline of portfolio management offer insight into managing the impacts of change on RIM programs.

In Taming Change with Portfolio Management--Unify Your Organization, Sharpen Your Strategy, and Create Measurable Value, portfolio management is defined as a "set of disciplined processes for making smart business decisions about change events." The authors describe portfolio management as a means to manage the continual cycle of change in which today's businesses operate. The change cycle consists of four steps:

1. ) Operational planning helps determine how the change event affects the current operational state.

2. ) Investment analysis then identifies the optimum set of investments (e.g., human re sources, functional capabilities, infrastructure) to derive the greatest value for the business from the change event.

3. ) Work and resource management then translates the selected investments into actual work (while also managing the ongoing work of the business).

4. ) Measuring the value delivered includes measuring both tangible and intangible benefits derived from work performed as part of the investment.

Taming Change provides an excellent overview of portfolio management, as well as a great degree of detail about how it can be used to manage a business and respond to change. The value of the book to a RIM professional lies in the parallel that can be...