When it comes to IT projects, there is usually a long list of to-do items, all of which seem pressing and considered urgent by stakeholders. Without the time or resources to tackle them all at once, it becomes important to prioritize tasks. Effective prioritization can help IT teams with time management, enable all members to work more efficiently, and help to ensure that your team is tackling the most critical projects first. Show
That said, prioritizing IT tasks is not an easy process. With many different parties involved, all of which seem to have differing opinions about how projects should be handled, it can be frustrating and inefficient to try to prioritize projects properly. However, implementing some strategies to help with project prioritization and creating a prioritization system can make this task more efficient and effective. Strategies for Prioritizing ProjectsA few things that your organization should consider implementing as part of its prioritization system include: Evaluating Projects with Strategic Level Planning in MindBefore prioritizing, it’s important to spend some time gathering all of the information that your team needs to be able to order projects effectively. One part of that information gathering should involve working with the leadership team and gaining a thorough understanding of the business’s overall vision, the direction the company is planning to go, and the timeline for any major shifts. To better have an understanding of these issues, consider having all project managers involved in strategic-level planning. By better understanding and keeping the company’s strategic-level planning in mind, the IT team will be better positioned to prioritize projects properly. Identifying What Factors are Motivating Each ProjectSimilarly, as part of information gathering, it’s helpful to understand what factors are motivating each project. For example, is a project focused on gaining a competitive advantage, financial benefit, process improvement, legal or tax regulations, improving quality, reducing risks, or growing the business? Understanding what factors are motivating each project is important information that your team needs to have before ordering projects. Identifying any Issues that Might Impact Project Success or CompletionAnother component that it’s crucial to think through is anything that could potentially impact project completion. For example, do you have a project that can only be finished once another team completes a task? Or one that is dependent on factors that are outside of the business’s control? If so, it’s important to identify those issues so that you can keep them in mind when evaluating which projects to take on first. Creating a Criteria-Based MatrixOnce you’ve gathered the necessary information, create an objective system for weighing and evaluating projects. Creating a criteria-based matrix is an effective way to do this and to build a model that can be used repeatedly. Doing so will enable your team to rate each project based on established criteria, which will provide an objective, data-driven system for prioritizing tasks. Sharing Prioritization List with the Management and Leadership TeamOnce you’ve created a list that prioritizes projects, it’s important to share the list with management and the leadership team before beginning work. In addition to sharing this list, it’s helpful to also review the matrix with stakeholders so there’s transparency about how projects were ranked. Doing this ensures that all parties are on the same page about what projects will be given priority and helps to establish clear expectations. Further, it offers another opportunity for feedback and input before the established plan is put into action. Effectively Creating and Using a Criteria-Based Matrix to Prioritize ProjectsWhile information gathering and sharing is an essential part of the process, creating and utilizing a criteria-based matrix is perhaps the most important way to ensure that prioritization is done strategically, objectively, and effectively. To develop the matrix, it’s necessary to involve all IT stakeholders. With these stakeholders at the table, the first step is to establish the criteria to use to judge projects. These criteria will be specific to each organization and should be specifically catered to your organization’s priorities and needs. However, when crafting these criteria, it’s important to ensure that they are factors that can be measured objectively and easily. Examples of common criteria used are:
Once criteria are developed, allocate a weight to each criteria on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being least important and 5 being most important. Once the criteria are established and weighted, you can use the matrix to evaluate specific projects. Using a similar 1 to 5 scale, rate each project based on the impact that it will have on each criterion identified. For example, a rating of 1 would indicate that a project will have the least positive impact on a particular criterion; whereas, a rating of 5 would mean the project will have the most positive impact on the established criterion. After rating each project based on its impact on each criterion identified, simply multiply the rating and weight to get a score for each criterion. Next, add up the scores for each project to determine the order in which projects should be addressed. For more details about how to develop and utilize a criteria-based matrix, visit this tutorial. Tips for Easy and Effective Implementation of Prioritization StrategiesEven with good strategies and systems in place, the process of prioritizing IT tasks can be frustrating and challenging. After all, it inherently involves lots of different individuals, many of whom have different priorities and opinions about how projects should be addressed. To help ease this burden and to help to make planning more productive, keep these tips in mind:
Prioritizing IT projects is not easy or quick, but it’s an important step towards ensuring that IT teams are successful. Taking the time to go through this process helps to ensure the team has the necessary information to prioritize tasks and that the team is taking on the most important projects first. Further, it helps establish organization-wide communication, clear expectations, and transparency about how projects are ranked. If your organization does not have a system for prioritizing projects, start working with IT stakeholders and the leadership team as soon as possible to create one that can be used consistently to prioritize projects.
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Every organization needs what I call a “hierarchy of purpose.” Without one, it is almost impossible to prioritize effectively. When I first joined BNP Paribas Fortis, for example, two younger and more dynamic banks had just overtaken us. Although we had been a market leader for many years, our new products had been launched several months later than the competition — in fact, our time to market had doubled over the previous three years. Behind that problem was a deeper one: We had more than 100 large projects (each worth over 500,000 euros) under way. No one had a clear view of the status of those investments, or even the anticipated benefits. The bank was using a project management tool, but the lack of discipline in keeping it up to date made it largely fruitless. Capacity, not strategy, was determining which projects launched and when. If people were available, the project was launched. If not, it stalled or was killed. Prioritization at a strategic and operational level is often the difference between success and failure. But many organizations do it badly. Take another real example: a postal service company delivering packages to customers. Like many other postal services, the company has been struggling to survive in an era of increasing competition and digital substitutes. Senior leaders gathered employees together at a series of town hall events where the CEO asked them to focus on two operational priorities: efficiency (reducing delivery times) and customer satisfaction (ensuring customers had a good experience). One employee, Mary, got the message. And it worked fine until she was out delivering packages and was met at the door by an elderly man who asked her to come in and talk for a while. Mary’s natural inclination was to spend a little time with the lonely old man. It would be a kind thing to do, and surely it would also increase customer satisfaction. But then she froze. What about efficiency? If she spent even a few minutes chatting with her customer, her delivery times would suffer. What was she meant to do? Thousands of employees at this company were facing similar trade-offs every day. The predicament is a typical one. The senior management of the postal company thought they had communicated clear priorities, but in fact they had created an operational dilemma that resulted from strategic confusion. Contrast this with other successful companies. The European budget airline Ryanair, for example, is absolutely clear that it is a no-frills operation where efficiency is the operational priority — and efficiency takes precedence over customer service. The people who work for Ryanair know what the priority is, and thus know how to allocate their time on the job. Prioritizing increases the success rates of strategic projects, increases the alignment and focus of senior management teams around strategic goals, clears all doubts for the operational teams when faced with decisions, and, most important, builds an execution mindset and culture. Of course, sometimes leaders simply make the wrong decisions; they prioritize the wrong thing. But in my 20 years as an executive, the problem I see more often is that leaders don’t make decisions at all. They don’t clearly signal their intent about what matters. In short, they don’t prioritize. Among the organizations I have worked with — and others, such as Apple, Amazon, Lego, Ikea, and Western Union, that have highly developed senses of priorities — the payoffs are considerable. Companies that start prioritizing can experience significant reductions in costs (in my experience, roughly 15%) as less-vital activities are cut and duplicated efforts are consolidated. The number of priorities admitted to by an organization is revealing. It is notable that if the risk appetite of a senior executive team is very low (or if they are not able or inclined to make the tough choices), they will tend to have a generous portfolio of priorities; they don’t want to take the risk of not being compliant, missing a market opportunity, not having the latest technologies, and so on. But in my experience, the most successful executives tend to be more risk taking and have a laser-like focus on a small number of priorities. These executives know what matters today and tomorrow. At the extreme, this might mean simply having a single priority. The more focus, the better. The Hierarchy of PurposeI have over 20 years of experience in prioritizing, selecting, and managing projects. In that time, I have developed a simple framework that I call the “Hierarchy of Purpose.” It is a tool that executive teams can use to help them prioritize strategic initiatives and projects:
At best, prioritizing enhances the strategic dialogue and the alignment at the top of the organization, from where it is then cascaded to the rest of the organization. Once you lead the executive team to understand this, priorities become embedded in the organization and its corporate culture. Think of your organization’s priorities. Are all of your diverse activities prioritized in the best interests of the organization as a whole? What is the best use of the organization’s existing and future financial and operational capacities? How would your priorities change in case of a sudden economic downturn? A well-communicated sense of organizational priorities helps to align most of the projects and programs in an organization to its strategies. But the reality of an organization is much more complex than many suggest. Sometimes the strategic objectives are not clear, or are nonexistent. Often there is a gap and lack of alignment between the corporate strategic objectives and the ones from the different business units, departments, or functions. In reality, it is impossible to match all of an organization’s projects and programs to strategic objectives. Ensuring that at least the most important projects and programs — let’s say the top 20 — are fully aligned with the strategic objectives is more achievable. By applying the Hierarchy of Purpose, executives learn that changing priorities is a fact of organizational life. Indeed, every time an organization stops a priority, the organization becomes more focused. Every terminated priority is an opportunity to learn and do better next time. Priorities change and, if managed successfully, have the capacity to fundamentally change organizations, but only if top management makes tough choices. |