Portfolio Assurance Resources
Doing the right things at the right time – prioritising projects in an organisation
The information in this guide is intended for general purposes only. For more specific guidance around your organisation’s projects, please get in touch with our team.
- Do you have full visibility of all organisational initiatives?
- What are the business’ strategic outcomes?
- Assessing each project’s progress to date
- Where are the budget overruns?
- Which projects are nearest to completion?
- Where is the most ‘noise’ around projects that may be losing support internally?
- Are critical projects under-resourced?
- Consider carefully before pausing or deprioritising projects
- Get assurance around your prioritisation
- Where to next?
- Latest Portfolio Assurance Articles
If project portfolios only had data to consider when prioritising, life would be much easier. The reality is that, as with all organisations, decision making is much more than a quantitative exercise. Each project has different objectives, personnel and budgets, supporters and detractors. Arguably all projects add value in some way, and determining which are the most valuable can become subjective debates without the right structure in place. There’s also the political aspect to portfolios – each has different owners and stakeholders. Changing, slowing or even pausing projects has far reaching implications that need to be handled properly.
So, how do you get started with prioritising projects in a way that’s sustainable for the business and doesn’t create new issues? We talk about this and other considerations below.
Do you have full visibility of all organisational initiatives?
Businesses often have some level of portfolio reporting that captures the programmes and projects in progress. It’s a good idea to conduct an audit of all activities and compile them in a centralised place – a number of project management tools provide portfolio management for leadership as well to get the helicopter view.
Some activities in the business may be ongoing and not necessarily under the official banner of a project or programme. It’s useful for these to be captured too as they demand resources just the same as ‘real’ projects. Anything that sits outside of regular daily operations should be considered.
What are the business’ strategic outcomes?
Portfolio management involves a number of hard decisions about people, budget and focus, so there needs to be a deep understanding of where the organisation is looking to go strategically before any calls are made.
By having this reference point at the centre of a portfolio management process, prioritisation becomes easier and less subjective for those involved. Ultimately all of your programmes and projects should be pushing the business towards its strategic goals. These goals help to form the basis of project prioritisation criteria beyond simply the health of each activity and its progress.
Assessing each project’s progress to date
On the flipside, a project that is in the early stages or even being planned may actually be deprioritsed if the business’ overarching strategic goals have changed. Consider situations in which the government changes and a fresh mandate is passed down from the new minister – these are often busy periods for those involved in portfolio management. Or, in the case of a private sector business, new ownership can have the same impact and demand for shuffling around budget and focus.
Early life projects that haven’t expended significant capital are usually less disruptive financially and within your staff. If handled properly, those people may be able to transition across to other work with little headache.
Where are the budget overruns?
It’s unfair to characterise all projects that are over budget as inherently unhealthy – at the same time it’s usually not a good thing and indicative of deeper issues. Some projects that are delivering great outcomes for the business may have to absorb over spending due to unforeseen factors, but ultimately remain critical for the business to keep alive. In those situations, the objective becomes reducing overspend in future by addressing the core issues.
For other projects, the budget blowouts may be of such a degree that it’s damaging to the business to keep them active. Through close analysis and portfolio review, the organisation may decide to put remedial measures in place with a clear timeframe, or, if these are all exhausted, may cancel the project.
We operate under the ethos that ‘every project deserves to succeed’, although a caveat to that is perhaps that all projects that are aligned with the business objectives should succeed. If a project is working in the opposite direction to the business, some serious thinking needs to be done. Perhaps the project doesn’t fall over entirely but undergoes a major scope change, allowing the business to retain a good project team but assign them to more valuable work.
Which projects are nearest to completion?
Where is the most ‘noise’ around projects that may be losing support internally?
Don’t underestimate the negative impacts of a project that’s losing favour with your staff, especially those where there is ‘no end in sight’. These projects may not need to be stopped entirely, but they do require urgent attention to remedy. If good people are allocated to what they consider a ‘bad’ project, the prioritisation exercise may be in the short term around redistributing those people to other more critical items of work. If that project isn’t central to the success of the business in the immediate financial year, it may be worth moving it down the list, and conducting a deeper review of the project without the pressure of an entire team working on it each day.
We have seen many projects totally revived after a comprehensive review and scope update, but they are easier to work on without lots of people aboard, so this may be an option to consider.
Are critical projects under-resourced?
Once the business has mapped out its portfolio and started to identify the gaps, it can harness existing project resources much more effectively. And it’s much healthier for the financials when projects are being completed by moving existing costs around vs having to go back out to market or do a new funding bid (although often a combination of the two is what’s required).
Consider carefully before pausing or deprioritising projects
Ideally, the process of prioritising should be noticed and felt by management, while delivery staff are empowered to benefit from changes to their day-to-day workload.
Get assurance around your prioritisation
Sometimes getting absolute clarity on your project portfolio needs an outside perspective. But you will want to make sure that any other advice is done so from a place of experience and expertise. This is where portfolio assurance is perfect – helping organisations see all angles of their project portfolio and shine a light on risks and opportunities that make decision-making much easier. Our team has been providing such support to New Zealand organisations for two decades, so it’s worth getting in touch today to discuss your specific challenges.
Where to next?
Managing risks In a project portfolio
Risks exist in every project portfolio. It’s not possible to eliminate them, but it is possible to be well-prepared.
Learn More >>
Designing a portfolio delivery plan
Any good organisational initiative needs a strong plan. A portfolio approach to projects relies on good planning to ensure the health and success of each underlying activity. We explain what this looks like in our guide.
Learn More >>
Guide to portfolio governance
Governance doesn’t just exist at the project level - good practices around the reporting and management of the portfolio in its entirety helps organisations stay in control and on budget.
Learn More >>
Prioritising projects in an organisation
Priority of business initiatives is complicated - there are financial, strategic and even political aspects to project portfolio management.
Learn More >>
The secret to successful portfolio delivery
What makes a business adept at delivering on multiple initiatives concurrently? We offer some insight in this guide.
Learn More >>
Building a balanced project portfolio
The balance of your project portfolio between activities that help drive towards strategic goals is critical to get right. We explain why.
Latest Portfolio Assurance Articles
Common Risks Within A Project Portfolio
Every project has its risks – it’s part of the territory. And a careful risk analysis of a project will typically surface a fair few items for a risk register to keep on the radar. It doesn’t take long then, for an organisation with multiple projects running, to become overwhelmed with understanding its business risk at any one time.
Why an organisation’s portfolio needs everyone’s input
Portfolios of projects or programmes require careful management to ensure that the overall strategic objectives and budget is properly balanced. But who is accountable for ensuring this happens?
How assurance has your back – helping you deliver successful projects time after time
There’s many benefits to having QA involved in portfolio management. Here’s just a few.
Signs it’s time to cut back the number of active projects
Is your organisation trying to do too much in too short a space of time? If so, it might be worth reprioritising projects to give each the best shot at success.
How to identify recurring issues in your projects
There’s a lot to be learned from assessing common themes across all projects. We offer a few ways to get insights from your own project portfolio.
5 reasons why you should reprioritise a project
In a business with multiple projects active at any one time, it’s sometimes hard to know which of these is a priority in a world of competing objectives. We talk about reasons why you might reprioritise the portfolio.
Explore our other QA services
Get In Touch
IQANZ Limited
Level 2, PSA House
11 Aurora Terrace
PO Box 11-757 Wellington,
New Zealand
04 473 4340
info@iqanz.com