Chad JowersPMO Director| Texas Health & Human Services CommissionAustin, Tx, United States
We operate as an operations PMO and are implementing a more robust process for business areas to rank/prioritize projects. Business areas will then bring a project concept to our current governance board. There is no process for scoring the projects for "approval" or "rejection". We are providing the business areas with ranking/scoring criteria before coming to the board but then the board needs a methodology to approve the concept up to leadership for final review/acceptance - appreciate any insight or suggestions. Saving Changes...
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Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
It seems to me too much level of approvals. But the key thing here is your defined governance process in place. If you ask me, the business must provide you with all the information about ranking/scoring numbers and criteria. It does not mean that you can help them on that. Projects or initiatives are the way to put strategy into action then they have to clasify and select the initiatives not you as the PMO. So, I can not put here the process to get the final selection of initiatives for the current year but it has no sense because what works for my actual work place governance and strategy process will not work for you. Saving Changes...
A scoring model or other prioritization scheme is there to support healthy discussions within your governance committee, not to replace them. You may wish to investigate the use of throughput accounting-driven prioritization rather than conventional scoring models as that will give you better bang for the buck when dealing with constrained resources.
Kiron Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Chad,
in my last implementation the Board did not vote on singular projects but on 2 or 3 scenarios of selected portfolios. The scenarios were prepared by the PMO based on 5 selection criteria for each project, but then considering also dependencies, resource capabilities, and a certain amount of fairness and leveling out across divisions. The scenarios were published a week ahead and questions were answered.
This way we widely avoided bargaining during the meeting and pet projects. The meeting took only 15-30 minutes, led by the CEO.
There may need to be a combination of objective measures such as ROI, and also subjective criteria like whether a project supports long term business strategies. Scoring models are commonly used, but combining different types of criteria into a single number has its own challenges.
One tool I have used that is helpful is a matrix similar to what many call a "risk cube" where each project is ranked on impact vs. benefit. Because there may be many non-measurable factors affecting both measures, there is typically a discussion required to achieve the scores (typically 1 to 3 or 5) rather than a purely mathematical formula. By placing all the projects on the same grid, it is easier to see the overall relative placement, than trying to rate all the projects 1 through N. Saving Changes...
You can use Analytical Heirarchy Programming Modelling on a basic scoring model, where you do a sort of A/B ranking on parameters as well as projects to finally arrive at a cross matrix that lets you see overall relative ranking. It can further be used to develop a Super matrix by converting AHP to Analytical Network Process. This is a super helpful tool which will let you assign weight to the parameters based on focus group discussions, rather than just beleiving in plain assumptions.
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1 reply by Keith Novak
Jun 30, 2021 10:12 AM
Keith Novak
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If you are going to use focus group discussions for weighted parameters, you might as well use fuzzy logic. Assigning weighted values to numerous unlike parameters can result in some dubious math that people tend to trust (or distrust) absolutely.
You can build fuzzy sets by doing the same thing but rather than numerical values, the questions are more of the form, "If cost is below X, aesthetics are deemed excellent, and performance is adequate, then the project is?" (Respondents align to a simple scale like poor to excellent)
Same basic principle, but the fuzzy logic establishes the weighting of each parameter based on all responses combined.
You can use Analytical Heirarchy Programming Modelling on a basic scoring model, where you do a sort of A/B ranking on parameters as well as projects to finally arrive at a cross matrix that lets you see overall relative ranking. It can further be used to develop a Super matrix by converting AHP to Analytical Network Process. This is a super helpful tool which will let you assign weight to the parameters based on focus group discussions, rather than just beleiving in plain assumptions.
If you are going to use focus group discussions for weighted parameters, you might as well use fuzzy logic. Assigning weighted values to numerous unlike parameters can result in some dubious math that people tend to trust (or distrust) absolutely.
You can build fuzzy sets by doing the same thing but rather than numerical values, the questions are more of the form, "If cost is below X, aesthetics are deemed excellent, and performance is adequate, then the project is?" (Respondents align to a simple scale like poor to excellent)
Same basic principle, but the fuzzy logic establishes the weighting of each parameter based on all responses combined. Saving Changes...
