How to Prioritize Your Company’s Projects

 

Business priorities can change depending on the paced that the industry is in.

Now that the year is almost coming to an end your organization should have a list of projects that it wants or needs to undertake.

But how do you prioritize if everyone saying that their project is important and needs to be done?

There has to be a Laser Focus on what projects are important to the business. Meaning all have to agree on number one - numero uno - project and the next ones after it.

Some of the pitfalls a business could face:

Having no clear view of the status of the projects or even the anticipated benefits.

Lack of due diligence in updating the status of the projects.

Projects being driven by resource's availability instead of project's strategy alignment to the business goals. Resources are available for the projects - let the project roll. Not enough resources - the project is put on a back burner, together with the business.

Business has to not only priorities projects at a strategic level but at an operational level as well. Not doing so can mean the difference between success and failure for the business.

I have over 20 years of experience in prioritizing, selecting, and managing projects. In that time, I have developed a simple framework that I call "Laser Focus." Main points of Laser Focus:

Goal:

What is the goal that the organization is pursuing? What is the vision statement for supporting this goal?

Triple Constraint:

Scope, Cost, and Time. And in the middle of the Triple Constraint sits Quality.

Operational and Strategic Project List:

What is the business's immediate and long-term projects?

People:

Without people there is no business. Do you have the right set of people to accomplish the projects? Do you have a plan to make sure that your people have the necessary skill set and a chance to grow new ones? Do you have a succession plan to take someone’s place when they are promoted or leaves the company? Do you have a moving up the ladder plan?

Communication is the key. Executive team needs to clearly spell out what its business purpose is, and its business's values and goals are. Executive team needs to communicate how the projects that the business undertakes gets organization closer to its goal. Departmental heads need to instill in their teams the correlation of the value of how each of the teammate’s accomplishments in a the project brings the organization closer in realizing its business purpose.

By applying the Laser Focus executives are able to better handle priorities changes. And, if communicated properly they'll be able to manage projects successfully and lead their organization into prosperous future.