There is significant interest in managing IT resources as a portfolio of assets. The concept of IT portfolio management (ITPM) is relatively new, compared to portfolio management in the context of finance, new product development (NPD), and research and development (R&D). This article compares ITPM with other types of portfolio management, and develops an improved understanding of IT assets and their characteristics. It presents a process-oriented framework for identifying critical ITPM decision stages. The proposed framework can be used by managers as well as researchers.