Patent ID: 8121889

Claim:
A method of managing an information technology (“IT”) portfolio, comprising: determining a plurality of criteria that are important to a target market for products in an IT portfolio, and at least one attribute to be used for measuring each of the criteria; specifying objective measurements for each of the attributes; conducting an evaluation of a plurality of the IT products in the portfolio, wherein the evaluation of each of the IT products further comprises: inspecting a representation of the IT product, with reference to selected ones of the attributes; assigning attribute values to the selected attributes, according to how the IT product compares to the specified objective measurements; programmatically computing an assessment score, for the IT product, from the assigned attribute values using computer-readable program code executed by a computer; for each of the selected attributes for which the assigned attribute value falls below a threshold value, using computer-readable program code executed by the computer to programmatically compute an assessment score increase that will result by raising that assigned attribute value to the threshold value, the programmatically computing an assessment score increase comprising recomputing a value of the assessment score for the IT product using the threshold value as a replacement for the assigned attribute value of the selected attribute; and using computer-readable program code executed by the computer to programmatically compute a potential assessment score for the IT product by summing the assigned attribute values and the programmatically-computed assessment score increases; and using the programmatically-computed assessment score and the programmatically-computed potential assessment score for each of the plurality of evaluated IT products to select a subset of the IT products in the IT portfolio.