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On Prioritizing Your Projects

March 2, 2010 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Portfolio Management

On Prioritizing Your Projects
By Demian Entrekin

Let’s just say for a minute that you have somewhere around 25 relatively important projects that are active. And let’s say that you have about 25 that are in the hopper that are also deemed “important” from the standpoint of the sponsors. They might even be considered “urgent” or “mission critical” or “code red.” I don’t know what “code red” means - I just made that up.

Let’s also say that you have another 25 active projects that are considered “less important”. Perhaps these are regularly scheduled maintenance operations. Or perhaps it’s that series of Windows 7 testing projects that you know you will have to get to sooner or later. Luckily, you avoided it for Vista and it turned out to be a non issue since no one wanted to “upgrade” to Vista.

But now you have a “fix the business” project that has come down straight from the top. The CEO or the Board have mandated that this project must succeed at all costs. It cannot fail. Oh, and everyone that is listed on your company directory has very strong feelings about the value and purpose of this “fix the business” project. So what happens now?

What happens to the list of 25 active “important” projects? What happens to the 25 “less important” projects. What happens to the queue of projects waiting to be approved, funded and scheduled? How do we decide what to do with this list of 75 projects? Who gets to decide?

Perhaps you have a project steering committee, or perhaps you have a Chief Project Officer, or perhaps you have a highly active CEO or COO or CTO who gets in and rolls up his sleeves and makes the recommended changes and takes the hits for making the recommendations, but now you have a place to start.

Either way, what you need is some way to gauge what stays and what goes. You need a key, or a map, or a Rosetta Stone. This key usually comes in the form of a document. Quite often, this document is called a Strategic Plan. Perhaps you call it the Business Plan.

This document states in plain, simple language where the organization is headed as it relates to where the organization currently stands. If this document cannot be used as a key for prioritizing projects, then it is probably not a very good strategic plan. It needs to be specific about goals and targets and means and constraints. In the private sector, this amounts to target markets and a plan for a sustainable competitive advantage.

Perhaps this document needs modifications now that there is clearly a new urgency from the top to “fix the business.” Either way, if you do not have this document in your hands as you begin to shuffle the projects on the deck, you are in for a lot of pain. If you don’t have one, ask for one. If you can’t get one, write one and start with that.

Demian is the CTO of Innotas. As founder and CEO, Entrekin oversaw marketing, product development, sales and services for the company. Today, he focuses on strategic product direction. Prior to Innotas, Entrekin co-founded Convoy Corporation and was Chief Architect of its initial products. In that role, Entrekin helped the company lead the middleware market with an annual growth rate of 670 percent and played an instrumental role in Convoy’s subsequent acquisition by New Era Networks in 1999. A recognized thought leader in Project Portfolio Management, Entrekin has published numerous papers on PPM and his blog (PPM Today) explores current issues related to successful PPM implementation. During his 18 year career, Demian has assumed leadership roles as a consultant and as an entrepreneur, delivering commercial and corporate database applications. Demian holds a B.A. in English from UCLA and an M.A. in English from San Francisco State University.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 and is filed under Project Portfolio Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 person has left a comment

If a mandate has come down straight from the top, chances are the CEO or the board has made promises to the customer before the PM ever hears about it. Waving a business plan in the face of said executive(s) isn’t really going to help much for two reasons - it won’t change their mind, and the reason is that they’ve already made a promise and they aren’t going to break it for fear of looking irresponsible.

Therefore, someone has to decide what to do about the others, you’re correct. Hopefully it isn’t the PM having to go to customers that are already expecting a project schedule to begin within a few days and have to be told that the company is having to put it off.

Maybe the company hires extra staff for the time being, which they really can’t afford, to save face to all the customers expecting active projects. I’m not sure. When a company steps outside its business strategy to please a friend or a highly lucrative customer, I would ask they bear in mind the long-term consequences - lack of trust from customers and staff, very low staff morale, and lack of credibility if you can’t deliver.

Laura Bamberg wrote on March 3, 2010 - 2:12 pm | Visit Link

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