Agile service delivery teams with high autonomy and self-organization are spreading throughout many organizations. To foster alignment of the teams to the enterprise strategic vision while maintaining their autonomy, a corresponding IT portfolio management as linking mechanism is perceived necessary. Organizations are facing a growing number of possible approaches for agile IT portfolio management. However, empirical and theoretical evidence on best practices for being able to choose a fitting approach to the own needs and the relevance of business IT alignment on agility is scarce. In this paper, we outline our initial research proposal to design a set of patterns for agile IT portfolio management and highlight their boundaries of application. As we pursue both practical relevant and scientific rigorous results, we combine theoretical and empirical input for both designing and evaluating the patterns within the applied design science research cycle.