series<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nIn order to arrive at an objective and thoughtful decision about project investments, the project management office must lead the organization through a structured process of assessing, analyzing and scoring projects<\/strong>.<\/p>\nThere are many methods and tools available to assist with this exercise.<\/p>\n
Here are some best practices to consider when taking on project evaluation:<\/p>\n
Define and Implement a Project Evaluation Process<\/h2>\n
Before starting the evaluation process, meet with senior executives to review the road-map. The goal should be to:<\/p>\n
\n- Identify\u00a0strategic drivers that are shaping organizational strategy.<\/li>\n
- Define variables that key stakeholders consider important when assessing project candidates.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
This step not only helps confirm that you are headed\u00a0in the right direction, but it also helps senior management commit to the process<\/strong> before communicating it to project stakeholders.<\/p>\n1. Establish Evaluation Criteria<\/h3>\n
Develop criteria to score against all projects. That way you’ll have\u00a0a quantitative way to express and measure organizational attributes that are deemed important.<\/p>\n
Interview senior management to understand their priorities, such as:<\/p>\n
\n- Importance of how internal departments interact and share information.<\/li>\n
- Sensitivity towards impacting external relationships with customers and business partners.<\/li>\n
- Tolerance toward risk and change.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
2. Define Scoring Methodology<\/h3>\n
Not all criteria are equally important. Many organizations have weighted each criterion on a 10-point scale to define the balance between their short-term and long-term objectives, and external and internal focus areas.<\/p>\n
3. Communicate Process<\/h3>\n
The successful implementation of a project evaluation process requires good documentation and communication<\/strong>. Standardize the process by creating a procedural document and templates that describe the project goals, scoring methodology, roles and responsibilities, and workflows.<\/p>\nTo ensure an effective roll-out of the process and help maximize stakeholder buy-in, conduct information-sharing sessions where you review the procedure documentation, walk-through completed examples of the template to fully illustrate the process, and communicate the timeline.<\/p>\n
Analyze Project Evaluation Results<\/h2>\n
The primary objective in this step is to organize and analyze the qualitative and quantitative evaluation results across multiple dimensions. Here are some of the recommended analyses and points of view:<\/p>\n
1. Alignment to Business Strategy<\/h3>\n
It’s critical to evaluate the project’s level of alignment with strategic priorities:<\/p>\n
\n- Directly rate alignment to priorities and assign a score to measure against each criterion.<\/li>\n
- Use soft benefits and hard benefits as the means to describe the extent of the alignment.<\/li>\n
- Avoid co-mingling \u201clights-on\u201d projects or compliance, regulatory or legal projects.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Sometimes operational leaders struggle to see the connections and alignment<\/strong>. The PMO can provide coaching to assist and ask questions that can lead to answers on whether a project is necessary or not.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n2. Cross-project Inter-connectivity<\/h3>\n
So you\u2019ve completed the strategic alignment analysis for each project as a stand-alone effort. Now a different picture emerges when you evaluate projects together<\/strong>:<\/p>\n