Mastering Project Prioritization - for PMOs, AMOs & Transformation Leaders

In today's fast-paced business environment, agility and strategic alignment are crucial for success. This blog provides valuable insights and actionable strategies for Project Management Offices (PMOs) , Agile Management Offices (AMOs) and Transformation Leaders to master project prioritization, ensuring resources are allocated effectively and strategic goals are met.

Why Master Project Prioritization?

Building a strong business case for project prioritization involves quantifying both tangible and intangible benefits. Some of these benefits include:

• Higher-quality decision-making: A structured and repeatable project selection process leads to faster, higher-quality decisions.

• Better strategic alignment: Prioritizing projects that align with strategic goals minimizes resource waste and missed opportunities.

• Improved success rates: By thoroughly understanding risks, including feasibility, ability to execute, potential for scope creep, and cost overruns, project success rates increase.

• Better resource and capacity allocation: Entrusting the right projects to the right resources minimizes opportunity costs.

• Measurable financial outcomes: Tracking development and operational costs and revenue generation drives a focus on higher-ROI projects.

  
  
  
  

Business Alignment: The Primary Critical Success Factor

Business alignment ensures that projects support the company's strategy, whether top-down (strategy-driven project selection) or bottom-up (project-driven strategy alignment). High-maturity organizations focus more on strategy execution, aligning projects with specific objectives. Especially in complex transformation projects, it is important that all People, Process & Technology dimensions align:

Digital Transformation Dimensions

However, projects can get misaligned due to:

1. Unclear business strategy: Alignment with strategic objectives is challenging when those objectives are not fully documented or communicated.

2. Insufficient stakeholder involvement: Project pipelines can veer from strategic goals when business leadership is uninvolved in portfolio governance.

3. Weak performance measurement & governance: A failure to define proper success criteria, including measurable metrics of value, can result in misalignment.

To improve business alignment, it is important to:

• Communicate strategy through a variety of channels.

• Require stakeholder involvement and buy-in.

• Implement portfolio management tools.

  
  

Best Practices for Effective Project Selection

Key success factors and recommended best practices for effective project selection include:

1. Integrate selection process with PPM lifecycle processes: Automate the workflow from idea capture to project delivery.

2. Use the most appropriate selection framework: Popular methods include scoring models, cost/benefit analysis, payback period, NPV, IRR, and discounted cash flow.

3. Define the most salient selection criteria: Balance thoroughness with simplicity.

4. Continuously improve your process: Track your process performance using feedback loops and adjust accordingly.

   
   

Technologies & AI: Digitalizing Project Prioritization

Modern project selection and prioritization solutions must be comprehensive, managing everything from ideation and request to delivery and operations. AI can play a significant role in:

• Data-enriched decision/scoring models: AI leverages advanced algorithms and machine learning to analyze large datasets.

• Advanced risk assessment and mitigation: AI excels at proactively identifying project risks and proposing mitigation strategies.

• Predictive analytics: AI's predictive capabilities extend to forecasting project outcomes.

• Resource allocation and capacity management analytics: Optimal project selection must consider the efficient use of available resources.

  
  

Next Steps

1. Build a centralized Project, Agile or Transformation office and collect all current project & transformation data versus strategy and business priorities.

2. Assess the maturity of your project selection and prioritization process.

3. Perform a process assessment, building a business case, or developing a specific plan of action.

4. Build a comprehensive project and initiative roadmap aligned with the strategy

5. Develop a robust PMO / AMO or Transformation steering process to collect project updates on resources, outcomes, issues, etc. and update major stakeholder in the organisation.

6. Align all running and potential new initiative regarding resource, business and market needs to prioritize the best outcome for the organisation.

   
   

By mastering project prioritization, PMOs, AMOs and Transformation Leaders can drive organizational growth and innovation.

For more information how to implement project steering and prioritisation successfully please contact us on transform@asiapmo.com or on our contact form.

This blog was written by Carsten Ley, Entrepreneur, Enabler & Project Lead in Customer Experience, Project & Business Transformation leading large scale project implementations in Retail, E-commerce, Banking, Consulting & Experience Management for companies like Deloitte Germany, VW Mexico, Rolls-Royce UK, Lazada Vietnam and H&M South East Asia. He founded 2018 Asia PMO, a consulting firm focussing on getting clients fast and efficient into implementation of company objectives, customer & employee experience improvements to foster a result- and team-oriented environment.