Continuous software portfolio performance management

Abstract

Product portfolio decision making is the process of coming to decisions regarding resource division along multiple software products. This process is part of portfolio management, and is an essential task in managing a software company. However, product portfolio decision making is an implicit process, and product managers are too occupied with tactical and operational decision making to execute strategic decisions regarding portfolio management. Academic research has not yet provided a model to adapt intuitive and opportunistic portfolio decision making to an explicit and data-driven cycle. The goal of this research is to make portfolio decision making explicit by modeling this process in the Dutch software industry. Case studies at 6 small to medium-size software companies in the Netherlands evaluate the initial Software Portfolio Decision Making (SPDM) model. We present the SPDM model after adaptation to the findings in the case studies. Using this model enables software companies to move from an intuitive decision making process towards data-driven explicit decision making.