Technology Portfolio

As discussed in the section on the Technology Lifecycle, your organisation will have a range of technologies in its portfolio. As part of the road-map for your Enterprise Architecture you may be looking to streamline the amount of different technologies that you support and ensure that existing systems deliver the maximum possible value (more on this in ‘Getting more from existing investments’).

You may also have different approaches to ‘commodity’ services and those that can deliver genuine strategic advantage to your institution. There is more on this topic in the Portfolio Management infoKit. The section on Balancing your Portfolio looks particularly at the mix of strategic projects you may undertake at any particular time. The approach to managing risk across the range of projects and determining what kind of return particular investments may deliver is, however, equally applicable to thinking about how far you are prepared to innovate with technology and where such innovation will deliver the greatest benefits.

Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) has done a lot of work in this area as a result of which it has developed its ‘Core Plus’ approach to the use of technologies for learning and teaching. The following ‘Onion’ diagram shows the technologies in use in 2011 and the approach taken by central services to supporting technologies in each of the rings of the onion. This approach formed part of a broader initiative to set threshold standards (MMU 2009) for the student learning experience at MMU.

Core Plus Approach - Image JISC W2C Project CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Core Plus Approach – Image JISC W2C Project CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

An excellent example of showing how technology implementation aligns with strategic priorities comes from the PALET project (Programme Approval Lean Electronic Toolkit) at Cardiff University. The project developed what it termed the ‘Motherboard’ to show how the work of the project in implementing specific tools, underpinned particular strategic objectives of the institution.

PALET Motherboard
Image – PALET Motherboard