by Business Analysis,
Project Pipeline Prioritisation – A Recipe for Success
Recent research indicates that, 50% of Australians experience gut health issues (CSIRO 2019), yet an alarming number of Program Managers/Directors use that same gut to prioritise their institution’s initiatives.
Equally concerning is the 2nd highest contributor to project prioritisation, the squeaky wheel (or loudest voice).
“There has to be a better way!” you say? Thankfully, there is.
Many institutions struggle to break free from the “gut or wheel” based prioritisation due to the lack of a transparent, structured, and sustainable method to prioritise their initiatives. This can lead to frustration among stakeholders and project team members as well as countless missed opportunities and failed strategies.
If you have an appetite to learn more, then read on, ketchup on best practice, and relish in the glory of success.
Project Prioritisation – What’s your flavour?
We’ve seen everything from an email list of big, medium and small upgrades from system owners to a mass email/survey asking the business users what they want. If multiple people say something similar, sounds like a priority! These (thankfully) are over-simplified examples and usually there are many more presentations, meetings, and layers of approvals etc. before initiatives are given the capital tick of approval.
The final list though is often like a souffle, it can look great from the outside but start poking around a little and it falls apart due to lack of substance. There are usually (seemingly) good reasons for why an initiative has been prioritised, but the considerations are rarely consistent and are often based on opinions that could easily change depending on who you talk to, and how they’re feeling that day.
Science, Strategy, and a Sprinkle of Sanity
Let’s have a look at some key ingredients needed for transparent, impartial and consistent project prioritisation aligned to business strategy.
- Strategic Alignment
Alignment to strategy is a basic concept at first glance, but like an onion, it has many layers. The ability to trace initiatives directly up to corporate strategy is important but depending on the organisation, it may require additional alignment to divisional or sub-strategies, or programs. To drive priority however, we expand this category to evaluate the key drivers in addition to, or in replacement of strategic alignment. Replacement? *gasp* System licensing/end of life, compliance requirements, or future project dependencies could all be key drivers that may not directly relate to strategic goals, but need careful consideration when evaluating initiatives against strategy.
- Standardised Criteria
It goes without saying (almost) that your base measures need to be consistent, just like the old “apples to oranges” metaphor, you need to compare/review your initiatives against standardised criteria. These need to be clearly defined and balanced around being general enough to use across multiple programs but also include enough detail to allow for an appropriate separation of results. Another ingredient/element supporting this variance is objective based scoring.
- Structured Scoring
Remove the gut, or any emotive driver behind scoring by ensuring that responses to criteria are clearly structured and free of ambiguity. Using generic terms like Low/Medium/High or scoring something out of 10 can yield vastly different results depending on who is evaluating the initiative and even how they’re feeling at the time. The goal is to remove these external influences and keep things clean and lean by using a clearly defined question and answer style approach. For example, instead of rating a project’s Technical Complexity as Low, Medium, or High, why not choose from options such as “1 System/Application impacted” or “3-5 Systems/Applications/Integrations Impacted”. The specificity of these values remove the “wet finger in the air” approach and ensures consistency irrespective of who reviews the initiative, also allowing for increased transparency. Behind the scenes, we turn these Q&A’s into numbers, and that’s where the next key ingredient comes in.
- Adjustable Weighting
This is a core concept that allows for continued growth and increasingly accurate prioritisation. The concept draws from “BABOK 0.16 Decision Analysis – Weighted Decision Matrix” and allows you to easily adjust the “weighting” for each criterion. For example, perhaps your business isn’t great at benefits realisation and how to accurately estimate project benefits. Initially, this criterion could have a lower weighting, which is then increased as you become more experienced and comfortable with measuring benefits. Should your organization require it, it’s also an option to evaluate proposals/briefs/business cases using different weightings to account for the more detailed information you’ll have as the initiatives progress through the project lifecycle. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the weightings can be used to adjust the priorities based on strategic drivers.
- Change Management
The last (and not so secret) ingredient talks to business readiness. The business has been wanting a specific change for years, the budget is approved, the team is prepped and ready, all the plans are in place to meet strict timeframes… but the business is a bit busy right now. This has caught out many projects before, and will no doubt continue to be an issue for some in the future. It might be a legislation change, a restructure, hiring, firing or a myriad of other reasons why the business has priorities other than “your” project. In addition to ensuring the business can resource/support the initiative we also consider items from the Prosci ADKAR® Model such as Awareness and Desire.
Time to find some laurels to rest on?
“Phew”, that was a lot to digest but is the job done?
Unfortunately, not.
Throughout the year, ad-hoc and external influences often bring change.
Staffing changes, legislation updates, strategic shifts, along with an endless list of other factors, could influence your previously prioritised initiatives. A good chef checks the oven – and so should you!
Do you have pre-set checkpoints or timeframes to regularly review and confirm or update your priorities? Do you reallocate project resources, or perhaps stop a project half-way through and deal with the stomach-knotting joys of sunken-cost fallacy? That’s a story for another day, but what you don’t know, can indeed hurt, so make sure to review your priorities.
As a parting reminder, before I follow my own gut to the cookie jar, be sure to consider the following when prioritising your initiatives:
- Strategic Alignment
- Standardised Criteria
- Structured Scoring
- Adjustable Weighting
- Change Management
Drive the 5 and thrive… and eat your fibre.