What are the Project Priorities? Why this is important? How to handle this?

Project Priorities- A project prioritise is the process of analysing which project, whether new or existing is important and which has to be completed on urgent basis. A project prioritization process is very essential for keeping criteria consistent for addressing the specific needs and goals of an organization.

Project priorities are to be done at the beginning stage of the project itself. Because this plays very important role to take the project in the right direction. Priority can be further classified into high, medium and low categories.

Project priorities gives us exact roadmap of project, which things need to be finished earlier and which things we can delay for later phases.

Project prioritization is especially important for larger organization that have multiple project and programs in their portfolio these organizations must execute multiple projects simultaneously but have limited resources which makes it necessary to prioritize potential project ideas.

Project prioritization techniques plays an important role in any organization or company because prioritization improves uniqueness of the project which in turns minimizing the resources like time and money.

The purpose of project priorities is to rank project in order of relative importance. It is nothing but the act of ranking project to determine their relative importance to stakeholder.

The main purpose of prioritization is for business analyst to facilitate stakeholder decisions and to understand the relative importance of business analysis information. And the importance may be based on value, risk, difficulty of implementation or any other criteria.

The priorities should also be aligned with the requirements of stakeholders and as the project progresses the client comes with new change request also which the BA has to give priority.

Therefore project priorities are need to be planned and set for effective and successful delivery of project in given resources.

There are many techniques for prioritization like-

1. KANO Model– The Kano model is based on the assumption that end user satisfaction with the final output of a project is related to the available features and functions. When assessing what to prioritize, we have to use x- axis and y-axis to determine the significance of each feature.
2. MOSCOW- M: Must have: non negotiable product needs that are mandatory for the team.

S: Should have: Important initiatives that are not vital, but add significant value.

C: Could have: Nice to have initiative that will have a small impact if left out.

W: Would not have: Initiative that is not a priority for this specific time frame.

3. Hundred Dollar Method- All stakeholders get a conceptual 100 dollars which they can distribute among the requirements. As much, the stakeholder may choose to give all 100 dollars to a single project or the person may distribute the points more evenly. The higher the amount allocated to each requirement the higher the priority of the requirement. At the end, the total is counted and the project is sorted based on the number of points received.
4. Stack Ranking-This method is mainly based upon customer’s expectation towards the product. This is the product backlog prioritization technique, where it simplifies the process and provides more reliable product to customer. This method is used for product development.

Why this is important?- The project Priority is important because it ensures that you correctly allocate company resources based on your unique needs. It is important because success rate of the project would increase as there would be less errors due to prioritization. Then quality of the project delivered would be on higher side as strategies and performances are aligned as per the stakeholder’s requirements. And project prioritization helps the companies to execute projects in less time with minimum resources. Hence, it is important.

How to handle this- When we handle the project, first we have to make the list of new projects and existing projects in hand. Then set clear objectives and vision for project how to success look like and what is the vision and goal of a project breakdown the project into the smaller part that help to easy to understand. And keep the deadline for each object for better understanding. Then communicate with stakeholder regularly ask them about the progress of a project using tools which are required for our project, talk with everyone freely that’s helps to better understanding, if any misunderstanding happens in, then BA and stakeholder helps to solve that problem. And continues meeting as well as documentation is required for successful completion.