COEPD – Center of Excellence for Professional Development Happy Learning
Project prioritization is the process to determine which existing project is the most important and most urgent which is to be worked for the fast completion. We can say few factors helps in determine project priority, which include time, budget, and available resources. Project manager must contemplate these factors against one another to find which project is the highest priority. Prioritizations can be done in by several methods that allow portfolio managers to assess the feasibility and potential value of the project.
Few techniques used for project prioritization:
Kano: This focus on the end user satisfaction. Features giving high level satisfaction to the end user should be given highest rank.
MoSCoW: This analysis divides features into four categories:
Must, Should, Could, Won’t. This helps in clarifying and prioritizing requirements.
Payback period: This is based on the recovering the cost of the investment. Projects having shorter payback period should be given highest rank in prioritization.
Scoring model: It completely depends on Subject matter expert opinion. This is based on evaluating different aspects of the project and the assigning different values to each criterion (project risk, feasibility study, benefits).
Project prioritization is important for big companies where multiple projects are going on at the same time. So these companies (All companies have different requirements which requires unique prioritization strategies) will prioritize projects based on their needs. Ex: Projects related to web security requires high rank, some projects based on Return on investment and importance of the project. It helps in seamless flow of project from starting to the end of the project.
Project prioritization ensures that you correctly allocate company resources based on your unique needs. BY prioritizing tasks, a company can minimize the time and money spends on less urgent and important projects. The efficiency of the resources increased when the right resources are working on the most important project.
Project prioritization helps in:
- Maintain operational efficiency: A process for project prioritizing enables you to maintain the caliber and level of work you do while ensuring the wellbeing of your remaining employees.
- Projects will be more successful in terms of hitting deadlines.
- Stronger Return on investments.
- Can save time and cost.
- Can see the difference in the project success rate (Increasing in the success rate).
How to prioritize projects: Project prioritization process is essential for keeping criteria consistent across a portfolio and for addressing the specific needs and goals of an organization. Here are the basic steps of prioritizing a list of projects.
- Create list of projects: Prepare a list of all existing projects. Make sure to consult department heads and high level managers to ensure to prepare error free value of the company’s project needs.
- Organize project by priority level: Prioritizing projects involves preparing list of projects and rank them based on the important and urgent ones. This helps in selecting and focusing on the projects.
- Determine prioritize criteria: Considering the organization’s goals and needs determine the prioritization criteria.
- Analyze and rank tasks: Apply these prioritization techniques to your projects and find the urgency and important one and rank them accordingly.
