Prioritizing Projects

  • I am trying to develop the best system for prioritizing elements within a project. Several years ago, an acquaintance showed me a system (now long forgot) whereby he would assign a value (or two values?) to each element of a project. The mathematical result of the value(s) would indicate the priority of the element. For example, suppose you have three elements to a project that have no dependency on the other; e.g,, for the project "Spend My $10K Inheritance", the elements are... Buy a car Take a trip Add a new room onto the house With my friend's system, a value (or two values) would be assigned to each element that would mathematically determine which was most important, next most important and least important. Does anyone know of such a system (or systemS)? I am trying to develop this for my own set of non-related elements. I hope this is comprehensible!


  • Hello I understand your problem. I’m an IT manager, and I’ve planned several projects where tasks, although not on the critical path, needed some form of prioritisation. The approach I’ve usually take is to view the non-critical tasks as if they were critical, and analyse them accordingly. I set up a matrix for each task, usually a table with tasks listed down the left and columns for my main analysis criteria. Unlike critical path (i.e. dependant) criteria that concentrate on the effect on the plan as a whole, I categorise the non-critical by softer, more human factors (So, if you like to look at it a different way, rather than assess impact of the tasks on a plan, I’m assessing impact on the people.) I try to stick to three or four factors, all ranked one to three. In its simplest form it looks like this I ask the people involved on the project (and it’s OK if there’s only one or 101) to assess the following for each task Comfort factor ( C ) Question: How happy would you be if the task didn’t happen at all 1. Very unhappy 2. Slightly unhappy 3. It wouldn’t bother me Desirability factor ( D ) Question: How much do you need (as opposed to want) the task to happen 1. Great need 2. Slight need 3. No real need Efficiency factor ( E ) Question: Will this task allow you to do your job better 1. Definitely 2. Probably 3. Maybe So, your table would look like this: TASK C D E TOTAL Buy a car 1 3 3 9 Take a trip 2 2 2 8 Add a new room 3 2 1 6 The final column is a total of the scores multiplied together. The lower the score, the higher the priority you should place on the task eg in the above, adding a new room should come first, then taking a trip, then buying a car. I have also used this situation in more complicated cases. Where there are a lot of tasks covering a wide range of types of activities, I have asked the people who perform the tasks what is more important to them - Comfort, Desirability or Efficiency. Depending on their ranking, I have added weighting factors in the form of another table eg, in the case where Comfort is rated higher than Desirability which is rated higher than Efficiency, I’ve assigned them values of 3,4,5. I’ve then recalculated the table by adding a new level of multiplication (W) eg in your example TASK C D E W TOTAL Buy a car 1 3 3 3 27 Take a trip 2 2 2 4 32 Add a new room 3 2 1 5 30 You can now see that "Buy a Car" has assumed the highest priority, due to the fact that comfort and desirability were rated higher than efficiency. Of course this is all subjective, but as long as you are consistent, and as long as everyone on the project agrees with any assumptions made, this is a viable means of assessing non-critical tasks, and it works in practice. That’s the basics. There are several things you can do to increase your understanding of the priorities. You can - add more questions and therefore more columns in your table - add more possible replies to each question, and therefore a possible higher range of values in your table - modify the weighting factors as necessary for the plan as a whole - Add a "Risk" weighting factor as to how risky the task is - take into consideration the "float" for each task. ( ie Identify the best-possible-start time you want for each task, Identify the latest-possible-finish time Purely by identifying the "float" (the time difference between them) for each task, you can prioritise on putting tasks with small amounts of float first., or decide to do them based on latest-possible-finish , leaving the possible late finishers to the end of your task list, or you can add the Float Days as a multiplicand in your table. (Doing this will weigh your results towards tasks with small amounts of float, which may be something you’d want.) And of course, the questions themselves can change. I have also used the following questions, on a more technical project Comfort factor ( C ) Question: What effect would there be on your function if the task didn’t happen at all 1. High effect 2. Medium Effect 3. Low Effect Desirability factor ( D ) Question: How much do you need the functionality the task will provide 1. Great need 2. Slight need 3. No real need Efficiency factor ( E ) Question: Will this task allow the system to function more efficiently 1. Definitely 2. Probably 3. Maybe And they don’t have to be about Comfort, Desirability and Efficiency, (although I’ve found the three names concentrate the minds of both the questioner and the answerer) You can probably see scenarios where you can make up your own questions. Eg, in your own case, you might have questions like - Will it relax me - Will it improve my quality of life - would it increase my standing in my community etc All you have to remember is to have the answer the right way round - if they increase priority they should be valued lower ( e,g. Definitely increasing efficiency is valued 1 ) , if they have a lower effect on priority, they should be valued higher (e.g. no real need for functionality is valued 3 I have used this system on large projects with task lists of over 200 tasks, and on small projects with task lists no more than five or six items long. It works on both. (And I’ve also found it useful to use in standard projects at an early stage, to give a view of the flat requirements before starting any path analysis) Most of this is from personal usage and experience from 20 years on IT and Systems projects, but I’ve provided some links below that cover general task management material A great article on Critical Path Analysis, with a good description on the use of Float (or Slack), as they call it) http://www-distance.syr.edu/edu5900cpa.html Many free project planning/project management templates Project Connections http://www.projectconnections.com/knowhow/template_list/subjects/pmskills.html An nice concise overview of Critical Path Analysis http://www.credit-to-cash.com/small_business/project-planning-critical-path-2.shtml Google Search Strategy ://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22Project+Planning%22+%22non-critical+path%22


  • Sorry for the delayed response. I tried out this system and it worked beautifully for my project. Thank you SO MUCH for the winner!


  • prpro-ga, Does this system need to apply to situations in which the project is worked on by multiple persons simultaneously, or is only one person involved in the decision-making process? Thanks.







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    January 7th, 2009 | admin | gdwr.com | edit

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