In 1902 Rudyard Kipling wrote the "Just So Stories", a series of stories that explain how, by some highly amazing interventions, many animals were transformed from their original form into what we see today. In one story, "The Elephant’s Child", Kipling includes a short poem that contains four lines that impart as sound a bit of advice as you are ever likely to get:

I keep six honest serving-men:

(They taught me all I knew)

Their names are What and Where and When

And How and Why and Who.

The ‘characters’ Kipling identifies as his ‘serving-men’ can be seen again in the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture, named after its inventor, John Zachman, and developed in the 1980’s when he was at IBM. The same six questions form the basic toolset for any good investigative journalist.

In looking at the value of adopting a Corporate Portfolio Management (CPM) approach Catalyze has chosen to ask the same questions so as to be certain you have the answers you need to see how CPM can transform your organisation.