What are the project priorities? Why this is important? How to handle this?

In corporate projects, generally processes are complex and vast which needs well planned approach for successful completion. In software projects we follow SDLCs i.e. Software development life cycle models for planning and eventually completion of projects. Planning consists of cost/budget estimations, resource allocations, procurement, infrastructure availability etc. Apart from these factors priorities are something which needs to be determined for successful approach for implementation of project which we called as project priorities.

Project priorities gives us exact roadmap of project; which things needs to be finished earlier and which things we can delay or procrastinate for later phases. In real life projects, resources which are involved in projects are limited in number and needs to be used effectively, which is responsibility of project manager, who ensures that important or tasks of higher business relevance should be hit first. And to comply with this responsibility, project manager/project team decides project priorities. So, project priorities are something which helps project team to deliver important tasks at first to satisfy customers’ needs.

In the field of Business analyst or IT business analyst to be precise, client’s requirements are gathered and prioritized according to business relevance. Business analyst with client’s interaction decides priorities of tasks and according to those decided priorities project team delivers project so as to give maximum value to customer.

Importance of priorities can be visualized by successful and timely project delivery and saved cost due to efficient use of resources. Hence, project priorities are needs to be set and planned correctly for successful delivery of project. But, how these priorities are decided? Which are deciding factors to be considered? Which techniques do project team uses for deciding project priorities? These are some important questions which will pop up in everyone’s mind as soon as we understand the importance of project priorities.

Project priorities can be affected by certain factors such as,

• Business value: How important tasks are for business? This decides its priority based on business value.
• Financial: Financial analysis can give answer to priorities so as to maximize value of project with minimum financial impact.
• Urgency: Urgency generated by market conditions can be one of the deciding factors of project priorities.
• Organization bandwidth: Resources bandwidth of organization can be deciding factor for project priorities.

Along with above factors, there is some methods used especially in field of business analyst to prioritize tasks in projects such as, MoSCoW, 100 Dollar test etc. which helps us to prioritize requirements and handle successful project delivery.

So, we can conclude that project priorities are important for overall project success and can be decided considering some factors and techniques which are helpful.