Priority refers to doing something which is considered very important and must be completed with before any other tasks. It is very important for an organization to have a well-defined project prioritization to have a clear strategy – explicitly or implicitly – the project selection criteria. So it is crucial for the organizations to solve the problem of prioritizing the projects they pursue or already have in their portfolio by using proper prioritization criteria.
Prioritization Criteria
Some of the criteria for project prioritization are,
- Benefits of the project to the organization in terms of revenue, cost, profit, and improvement of image
- Complexity of the project in terms of necessary expertise, innovative content, contractual relationships, cross-cultural communication, work in virtual teams
- Risk value of the project in terms of damage to the organization’s image and overall risk value
- Contract management in terms of expected changes, expected claims
Organizational Benefits Criteria
- Revenue – Revenue of the project over its whole life cycle, from beginning of our activities, usually in project definition phase, until the end of project closure phase.
- Cost – We consider the total project cost over the whole project life cycle.
- Profit – Project profit is the delta between its revenue and its cost.
- Image Improvement – Every project undertaken contributes to the overall image of the organization, independent of revenue, cost, or profit. It is an estimate of the order of magnitude of how much the project contributes to the improvement of the organization’s image.
Project Complexity Criteria
- Expertise – A project complexity is further increased by undertaking the different areas of expertise required to incorporate and coordinate so as to successfully accomplish the project
- Innovation – Project complexity is further increased by trying to create either a project interim or end results which are innovative from the organization’s point of view.
- Cross-cultural Communication – Since team members come from different cultural backgrounds it further complicates the project deliverables.
- Virtual Teamwork – The complexity of the project adds when coordination of the project work across different sites of the organization. That is virtual team member are allotted to work on the project making it more difficult to track the progress and work-ethics.
Risk Value Criteria
- Image Risk – It is very important to understand the impact on the organization’s image in case of project failure, i.e. we cannot deliver the project result as required, and consequently do not get acceptance.
- Overall Risk – After conducting careful risk analysis and comparison with the already completed projects, we then sum up the risk values of the project in order to obtain an overall project risk value.
Contract Management Criteria
- Contractual Relationships: Understanding the contractual relationships that govern the project work. Some of the possible relationships cover a range from single supplier, over single supplier with sub-contractors, tri-angular contract (employer – engineer – contractor), and consortium contract.
- Expected Changes : Understanding the expected revenue, cost, and profit of changes, based on experience of already completed projects.
- Expected Claims against the organisation: Understanding the expected revenue, cost, and profit of changes, based on experience of already completed projects
- Expected Claims towards others:Understanding the expected revenue, cost, and profit of claims towards others, based on experience of already completed projects.
Prioritization Matrix Technique
Prioritization Matrix Technique is primarily used to prioritize and arrange the tasks in order of importance. Prioritization matrix is primarily a combination of a tree diagram and a matrix chart that is used to help decision makers determine the order of importance of the activities. The process helps to narrows down options by systematically comparing choices through the selection, weighing, and application of criteria.
Prioritization matrix technique immediately surfaces basic disagreements, and forces the team to narrow down all solutions to the best solutions. It limits hidden agendas by bringing decision criteria to the forefront of a choice and increases follow-through by asking for consensus after each step of the process.
Steps for developing a prioritization matrix
- Determine criteria and rating scale – The first involves determining the factors to assess the importance of each element which involves choosing the factors that differentiate important factors from unimportant factors like the value added to the customer, etc. Thereafter, for each criteria, set a rating scale to use for assessing whether an entity satisfies the prescribed
- Establish criteria weight – The second step involves placing the criteria in descending order of importance and thereafter assigning weight to each criteria.
- Create the matrix – The third step involves listing the criteria in the left column and the weight and names of potential entities across the top in an L-shaped matrix so as to judge the relative importance of each criterion.
- Work in teams to score entities – The fourth step involves reviewing each entity and then rating every entity on each of the criteria. Now, multiply the rating for each criterion by its weight and then record the weighted value. Post evaluating the entity against all of the criteria, add up the weighted values to find the entity’s total score.
- Discuss results and prioritize list – Once the entities have been given scores, discuss the results and thereby develop a master list of the entities that needs to be prioritized entities.
Illustration of prioritization matrix
Here,
10 – It is much less expensive
5 – It is less expensive
1 – It is same cost,
0.2 – It is more expensive
0.1 – It is much more expensive
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ABC analysis
The technique of ABC analysis used in business management helps to categorize large data into three groups. Note, ABC analysis can incorporate more than three groups. These groups are often marked as A, B, and C, such that each activity is ranked by according to the following criteria,
A – Tasks that are considered as being urgent and important
B – Tasks that are important but not urgent
C – Tasks that are unimportant
Such that, each group is then rank-ordered by priority. At times to further refine the process of prioritization, some individuals choose to then force-rank all “B” items as either “A” or “C”.
ABC analysis is often combined with Pareto analysis.
Pareto analysis
Under Pareto Analysis it is assumed that 80% of tasks can be completed in 20% of the disposable time where the remaining 20% of tasks will take up 80% of the time. The principle of Pareto Analysis helps to sort tasks into two parts. Pareto analysis recommends that the tasks that fall under the first category be assigned a higher priority.
80-20-rule is used to increase productivity where it is assumed that 80% of the productivity can be achieved by doing 20% of the tasks. Similarly, 80% of results can be attributed to 20% of activity. In case the productivity is the main aim of time management, then these tasks should be prioritized at a higher level.
Primarily, it depends on the method adopted to accomplish the task. Remember, there is always a simpler and easier way to complete the task. To use a complex way to complete a task, will be time consuming, so one should always try to find out alternative ways to complete each task.
The Eisenhower Method
“Eisenhower Method” is based on a quote attributed to Dwight D. Eisenhower which says,
“I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”
Under Eisenhower Decision Principle, tasks are evaluated using the criteria important/unimportant and urgent/not urgent, and thereafter placed accordingly in the respective quadrants in an Eisenhower Matrix /Eisenhower Box/Eisenhower Decision Matrix.
Division of Tasks
- Important/Urgent quadrant: These tasks are done immediately and personally such as crises, deadlines, or
- Important/Not Urgent: The tasks in these quadrant gets an end date and are done personally such as relationships, planning, recreation.
- Unimportant/Urgent quadrant: The tasks in these quadrants are delegated such as interruptions, meetings, activities.
- Unimportant/Not Urgent: The tasks in these quadrants are dropped such as time wasters, pleasant activities, trivia.
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Domino Reaction method
Domino Reaction Method is based on the idea that there are certain actions that you invest in only once in a life-time but it produces over time in different channels. Such as writing a book as it requires a one-time effort, as once you finish it, it continues serving you.
POSEC method
POSEC stands for Prioritize by Organizing, Streamlining, Economizing and Contributing. The POSEC method prescribes a template that emphasizes an average individual’s immediate sense of emotional and monetary security. The method suggests that by entertaining to one’s personal responsibilities first, an individual is better positioned to take up collective responsibilities.
The acronym of the method inherits a hierarchy of self-realization, that follows Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
- P – Prioritize your time and your life by goals
- O – Organize the things that needs to be accomplished regularly to be successful
- S – Streamline the things you may not like to do, but must do
- E – Economize the things you should do or may even like to do, but are not that urgent
- C – Contribute by paying attention to the few remaining things that make a difference