What does a Prioritization Model provide?
A prioritization model provides a decision support tool to assist senior management (such as a Portfolio Board) to prioritize those programmes and projects that represent the best alignment to strategic drivers, with the least risk of achievement.
A Prioritization Model Overview.
A prioritization model takes a list of potential programmes and projects and assesses each to identify the optimum portfolio, acknowledging organizational constraints such as availability of investment funds and resources.
What information is needed for a Prioritization Model?
To enable programme and project prioritization to occur, it is necessary to collect key information about a programme or project proposal.
This is usually undertaken using an assessment and prioritization form, which has two goals:
To allow business operations to register an idea with the P3O® for investment evaluation and to make a potential funding decision through governance arrangements.
To collect only enough information for the P3O to evaluate the proposal in a prioritization model before significant work commences.
It is important to note that this form is generally used as the entry point to an investment decision process and generally not developed to the level of a Mandate or Brief; it precedes these in a portfolio-managed environment.
Approach:
How to create a Prioritization Model.
The portfolio model is often populated as part of a business planning process and updated periodically (quarterly) to assess potential new programmes and projects for merit against the existing portfolio.
Stakeholders should be carefully identified and used to build a level of consensus as to the weightings of each of the parameters.
When tailoring or developing a portfolio model it is advisable to utilize clear parameters or metrics to remove subjectivity where possible. It is also necessary to review and refine the weightings and parameters periodically to ensure that they remain relevant.
When the results are produced, the information should be used as the basis of a facilitated workshop with key stakeholders to validate and refine where necessary. This acknowledges that the prioritization model provides decision support only and provides an opportunity for strategic discussion to support buy-in to the planned portfolio.
Example Matrix for Project Prioritization
