How can I effectively prioritize new projects when our engineering department has limited resources and the projects impose a significant demand on them? Saving Changes...
Only take on as many concurrent projects as there is capacity available. And, running a delivery system at 100% utilization is a guarantee for failure so ensure some slack is available.
How you prioritize will be based on what your organization considers important - it might be profit, strategic alignment, risk reduction or a combination of factors.
Does your PMO approve new projects, or are you in a position where someone else approves the projects and sends them to the PMO to make sure they get done? Do all project requests get approved, or is there criteria in place for approving AND rejecting projects? I ask this because I've worked at an employer where an IT committee seemed to approve the majority of project requests and the PMO was just expected to assign PMs to manage them.
Regardless of how projects are approved, you have the potential to end up with a backlog and the need to communicate the situation to others. One of the most important factors should be the company's strategic objectives - if a project is not aligned with strategic objectives OR is not a compliance mandate it should probably be given a lower priority (assuming it is approved).
If projects are coming in faster than they can be completed, this will create a bottleneck. If you can delay the start of approved projects it will slow down those projects, but if you try to do them all, all projects may end up slowing down. You could add more engineers. That's not usually a quick fix, and doesn't guarantee that work will get done faster or that your backlog won't continue to grow.
You would benefit from an approval and prioritization process that ensured projects met specific criteria in order to be approved, and that not only prioritized them and communicated an expected start date, in the future based on current workload, but also reviewed the, let's call it a portfolio roadmap, on a regular cadence to adjust priority, as needed. It's important to have the ability to pause a project if a higher priority situation arises, and have criteria for and the ability to stop a project early if it no longer fits established criteria.
Without something like this in place, your backlog will grow and you will likely get continued pressure to do more, faster. You may end spending more time communicating and negotiating with frustrated people than you want. Saving Changes...
Stephen NelsonOwner / Senior Project Manager| Rolling Wave Planning, LLCScarborough, Me, United States
In my experience, it is important to focus on those projects that are the highest business value that align with the current strategy and ensure regulatory compliance. There will always be more projects on the list than resources needed to accomplish them, but it is the projects that align strategy and business value, and keep you in compliance, that have the highest priority.
If your PMO is not at the executive table, even as a voice to provide input of what can get accomplished, and your engineering team is simply receiving assignments, then you need to push back with tact and business savvy that highest business value needs to trump lesser value projects.
This will not be a one-time conversation, but will require persistence because what you are trying to do is change culture, not make a logical argument. Saving Changes...
Start by determining whether projects are discretionary or mandatory. Mandatory could be regulatory compliance, contractual obligations, part or software obsolescence, etc.
Ranking discretionary projects can be done a few ways. One of the most common is by rating key characteristics that align to business goals like profit margin and generating a score. Another common way often done in planning workshops is multi-voting. After discussing the merits of all projects, everyone gets the same number of sticky notes to use as votes and and selects their preferred projects and can spread them between projects or use all their votes on their personal favorite. Saving Changes...
Claudeen PierreSenior Program ManagerDallas, TX, United States
By utilizing their Business Case Review Committe (of something similar) to determine a priority level for each project based on available resources, funding, impact on business functions, value to the organization and clients. Saving Changes...
Prioritizing projects with limited engineering resources can be challenging for a PMO. One approach is to conduct a thorough analysis of each project's strategic alignment, potential impact, and resource requirements. Prioritize projects based on their urgency, importance to organizational goals, and feasibility within resource constraints. Collaboration between project managers, stakeholders, and the PMO is key to making informed decisions and optimizing resource allocation.
Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Considering resource capability and capacity has to be part of the prioritization process. Understanding your bottlenecks and extending your capacity through consulting, partnering, or outsourcing are techniques to enable this. Saving Changes...
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