Don’t be fooled into assuming your projects can be evaluated with only one variable and in a linear stack rank approach, most technology projects have many nuances and variables and you’re leaving valuable projects on the table by not treating them as such. In this way, you can use the many available algorithms (Microsoft excel even has a plug-in) to solve your project selection process. We need to treat project prioritization with consideration for the many variables which affect projects.Ĭonsider constructing project prioritization along these lines: Optimize return on investment for a set of projects subject to the constraints of limited capital investment, limited labor resources, and “committed” initiatives such as regulatory or security requirements. To go back into the code the following year will require them to retrace steps. How many times do we miss that “red city” with our project prioritization? While the applications developers were in the application making an enhancement, they could have made the second enhancement relatively easy. If the salesman uses the stack ranking method, he would chose to travel to the next closest city from his current location. Let me use an analogy of the “Traveling Salesman Problem:” A salesman wants to maximize the number of sales he can make in one day subject to the constraints of the distances between cities. Why? How is that possible? Why can’t I simply line up my projects and pick the “best” ones? Simply put, by doing that, you’re not considering the multiple dependencies between projects and resources. In all cases, these methods leave valuable projects on the table and don’t yield maximum results. In most cases, there are frequent subjective arguments and it feels more like a religious battle, than an objective decision. Some companies may even choose projects based on a first in, first approved method, which rewards fast planning instead of the right projects. Those companies may spend valuable resources trying to improve the estimating process or the return on investment models, but still the process is tedious and doesn’t seem to yield better results. More mature companies may attempt to calculate the impact of the project and quantify a return on investment, but still perform a similar stack ranking method to decide which projects to execute. They estimate the size of the project, line them up from greatest benefit to least and draw a line based on the available resources. You know, the 1 to N approach for project prioritization. Many companies use the classic “stack rank” or “force rank” method for prioritization. Project prioritization can help a company make the right investments for their future. Project prioritization, possibly one of the most painful, time consuming events in any company, is also one of the most important.
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