The desired project goals and objectives of an organisation can only be met when the priority of its projects is aligned to its business strategy, allowing the company to determine what is important, what is urgent and what is unnecessary.
However, there is often too little time or too few resources to smoothly run a pipeline jammed with projects. For this reason, companies must prioritise projects so the desired business results can be achieved.
The outcome of a properly executed project prioritisation exercise is key in improving project maturity and guarantees greater business success. The downside to not undertaking project prioritisation correctly is confusion, and ultimately, project delays and unnecessary costs.
When good projects go bad
An example of good projects gone bad: a local financial institution was launching a new product to market and, at the same time, sponsoring a major sporting event. The projects had both been categorised as being number one priority. Due to a lack of resources in the marketing department, however, not enough marketing collateral could be dispatched to the branches, as during the same month, media copy and support had to be provided for the sporting event sponsorship.
By deadline, less than 50% of the marketing collateral was available to branches for the new product being launched and only the print media copy, and not television and radio inserts, was finalised for the sporting event. Incorrect prioritisation, therefore, did not allow marketing resources to focus on the work based on importance, with the consequence that both projects were only half completed, without 100% delivery on either.
Prioritisation plays a large role in the lack of delivery, as can be seen in the marketing department example. If a team works on too many projects - without any of these having priority status - it runs the risk of losing focus on quality project delivery. It is better to complete three projects as opposed to starting 10 and not finishing any.
Order of importance
It is better to complete three projects as opposed to starting 10 and not finishing any.
Guy Jelley is CEO of Post Vision Technology.
The best way to evaluate the priority of one project over another is to involve as many project stakeholders as possible in the initial project prioritisation. As with any sample group, the bigger the group, the more accurate the assessment will be. Questions relating to how the project aligns to all the business objectives must be asked to establish a straightforward business case for initiating the project.
After these questions and answers have been assessed, the project should have a prioritisation score based on negative factors, such as risk, time, budget, complexity and resources, as well as positive factors such as value, benefits and revenue.
If this is done right at the start of a project, it eliminates many headaches later. Yet, although technology can rank a project according to importance, project prioritisation is, in the end, still a management decision. Furthermore, it is important to continue to monitor the priority of the project based on changing conditions and other projects. Prioritisation is not a once-off event!
Accordingly, project teams should work with a project management software solution that is flexible enough to allow for real life prioritisation by incorporating functionality that makes it easier for businesses to prioritise and rank their projects in line with their corporate strategy.
Importantly, the solution must provide a prioritisation framework that clearly shows all stakeholders the importance of all projects as aligned to their business priorities, allowing staff to focus on the tasks at hand, thereby better managing their own deliverables and time. In short, the ideal project management software solution is one that provides the prioritisation as per the applied model, but also allows users to record the actual prioritisation based on the management decisions.
It cannot be stressed enough that businesses must ask why they are doing a project if it is not aligned to any business objectives. At the end of the day, project prioritisation should be simple and based on a model that measures benefit versus risk and cost. It should be applied to projects by various stakeholders, and if a project is deemed as critical, it should be run as a priority, thus receiving the required resources first.
Share