ABSTRACT
Organizations that recognize the role of information systems in their success generally establish an information systems (IS) Steering Committee to oversee those systems on behalf of top management. The IS steering committee is responsible for software procurement. For important systems, it may manage the procurement itself with support from the IS department. The purpose of a steering committee is to make sure that information systems investments benefit the organization. The concept of a balanced portfolio can be extended to include balance in other respects. An organization might try to balance the departments that new information systems support. Any organization large enough to have a procedure for selecting new information systems has an existing technology infrastructure and architecture. A good architecture is designed to be extendible. Such extensions usually fit the existing system architecture. When this is impossible, the architecture must be replanned.
