From driving your backlog to driving your strategy: How prioritization delivers performance

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At TransparentChoice, we love Business Integrated Governance (BIG) because it recognizes the reality of complex modern organizations as organic entities that wrestle with the paradox of needing formal structure while rejecting the idea of a straight-jacket operating model taken directly from a consultant’s playbook. The solution is a series of connected best practices allied to a culture of personal accountability... and prioritization is a fantastic place to begin that transformation.

Really? Isn’t prioritization just the meeting the PMO has once the directors have told them what to do? Not with BIG, and not with an organization that’s serious about delivering strategy-led growth with a rigorous commitment to value. So, if you're sick of horse trading and suspect your COO isn't quite as good at selecting the right projects as they believe they are... then we're here to help.

Done well, prioritization is the oil that smoothly joins your governance components together. It enables accountability by creating clarity on who is getting the investment and who is making do with what they have already. It translates broad intent into unambiguous jobs to be done. And of course, if you have a rigorous quantification process in place before you start a project, then you'll be able to measure its impact once the work starts.

All this can seem overwhelming, but let's be clear: fixing prioritization is not rocket science. Firstly, poor prioritization is predominantly a behavioral problem, so the solution must be people-oriented. Our software is an enabler for organizing chaos, for democratizing decision-making, and for structuring active listening through the application of Decision Science. Use it to convert disparate benefits into a quantifiable scale, and you have the basis for rational data-led decision-making. Of course, anyone with Excel can produce scores, but the key point of difference we're investing in is buy-in. By working together on the data, we trust the data, and with that trust, we can learn to say "no" to the lower value work that dilutes performance and confidence in the PMO.

We also discuss the E-PMO... the Enterprise-level version of the role. Prioritization is still critical, but the bar is higher, as the expectation is to support the delivery of organizational outcomes, not just deliver a high-performing portfolio. That means more engagement with the strategic planning process, which of course, BIG can help you develop. It also means using prioritization to break down internal barriers and enable resources to move between silos based on value rather than politics.

So, if you're a PMO who needs prioritization, an E-PMO driving Strategic Alignment, or an organizational leader who knows change has to happen... then we highly recommend checking out our webinar to find out how solving prioritization should be the start of your journey towards more robust governance. 

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