Rule of Thumb

I found this interesting criteria list on PM Hut to consider when deciding about project priorities:

• Urgency - When must this initiative be complete?
• Alignment – How well does this initiative supports the Organization’s Goals and Objectives?
• Productivity – How much will this initiative increase productivity?
• Cost Savings – How much cost will this initiative save over the next 3 years?
• Income Increases – How much with this initiative increase income?
• Morale – What is this initiatives morale improvement potential?
• Time To Complete – How long will it take to complete this initiative once started?
• Competitive Position – How will this initiative improve competitive position?
• Customer Service Levels – How will this initiative improve customer service levels?

When running tens of projects in parallel, you’re sure to face colissions. It is usually about resources, of course. How to resolve them? Man in charge might feel what needs to be done in such cases, but it’s not easy to communicate the decision without a proper explanation as every project manager, resource manager and business manager has his or her own view. This is where decision support systems come into play and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as defined by Thomas L. Saaty in the 1970s is one them.

AHP is a typical divide and conquer solution to tackling complexity. The idea is to divide a complex decision into smaller, manageable evaluations, which are then recombined into the final metric, which helps you make a decision.

This is not a one way process. AHP might propose a different solution than you expect and it enables you to backtrack the calculation to help you understand the model by which the solution was proposed. You can then either agree with the model or correct it, to better reflect the real situation.

As written on Wikipedia, AHP provides a comprehensive and rational framework for structuring a problem, for representing and quantifying its elements, for relating those elements to overall goals, and for evaluating alternative solutions.

There’s an excellent explanation with a step-by-step example on Wikipedia. Another one can be found on Microsoft site.

An interesting article appears on Robust Decission: Why pairwise comparisons are a waste of time for finding criteria importance. David G. Ullman presents a faster approach, especially usefull with more criteria.

Following our constant resource issues I’ve been Googling around for best practices in this area and stumbled across Michael Greer’s article What’s Project Portfolio Management (PPM) & Why Should Project Managers Care About It?.

He proposes a self assessment check list, to see whether you’re ripe for establishing Project Portfolio Management process in your company. It goes like this:

• Frequent difficulty finding enough people to put together a solid project team.
• Excessive project delays due to “not enough resources”.
• High turnover due to “burn out” of key project contributors because they are working on too many projects and spending too many overtime hours.
• Frequent change of status of projects (i.e., moving from “active” to “on hold” to “top priority” and back).
• Completion of projects that, when all is said and done, don’t really meet a strategic need.
• Intense competition, rather than cooperation, among departments and sub-organizations when staffing and funding projects.

It’s all more or less true for our organization. It’s not extreme yet, but something needs to be done before we get into a gridlock.

Solution? Start with documentation, says Michael Greer:

• Create “high resolution” project plans that accurately spell out, in vivid detail, the resources required to complete each task and activity.
• Capture the actual hours spent by all project players in completing project tasks and activities.
• Create summary tables showing planned and actual time spent by each person in your organization on every project to which he or she is assigned in order to demonstrate who’s overloaded.
• Document all incidents of resources that are “stolen” across projects, excessive overtime, large-effort-but-ultimately-useless projects, and so on.
• By conducting project “post mortem” evaluations, gather information about how systematic PPM might have prevented problems and encouraged successes.