Letting everyone know what projects are being worked on, how those projects benefit your company, and what those projects cost allows everyone to be on the same page.  With limited resources, projects have to be prioritized to get the biggest bang for your company’s buck.  A project list showing costs and benefits helps this prioritization and allows the business units to set IT strategies.

This doesn’t mean planning by committee and a free-for-all for IT resources.  A regular process for gathering the costs and benefits for each project and using that information to make decisions is needed.  Once everyone sees how proposed projects affect the bottom line, the decision on which projects to work on first become easier.  Prioritization becomes a mutual decision among all business units and IT.