Does your portfolio currently have too many active pieces of work? Running around with your hair on fire?
Are you unclear how to allocate finite resources and funding?
Or are you lacking visibility on those pieces of work that will achieve the greatest outcome for your organisation’s targets?
At the initiation of many engagements, Encompass’ clients often feel overwhelmed by the number of historical, inflight programs and an inability to objectively decode those that will drive the greatest impact.
Encompass works with our clients to co-design and implement prioritisation frameworks as an effective, evidence-based tool to support leaders to focus on the right pieces of work. By applying this focus, organisations can more objectively agree what programs need to start, stop, continue and amend.
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good (programs) or ideas.” — Steve Jobs
Strong prioritisation framework and decision-making processes:
- Assist organisations to manage complex transformation by objectively comparing programs.
- Enable everyone “to be on the same page” and have a single view of programs and their relative value.
- Set a clear route towards your goals.
- Allow your teams to focus on the right work at the right time to help achieve your targets, board, and community commitments.
One thing is for sure: making decisions based on gut feeling and subjective preferences (or even worse, pet projects!) will lead to expensive investments that more than likely will not support in achieving organisations’ most important goals and targets.
Below are Encompass’ suggested steps to creating an effective prioritisation framework
Step 1: Determine which prioritisation methodology is best suited as your starting point
There are many different prioritisation methodologies which have already been created to use as a first step. Depending on an organisation’s industry, focus and problem you are trying to solve will dictate the most suitable one for you – examples include the MoSCoW method (Must-haves, Should-haves, Could-haves, Will not have at this time) and the risk/reward matrix (value vs. complexity). Encompass often applies the risk and reward matrix for it’s simple yet effective approach, especially when prioritising programs to achieve system targets.
Step 2: Agree and weight prioritisation criteria
In most prioritisation frameworks a set of criteria will be defined and weighted with the leadership team. This is important to ensure there is buy-in to the framework and a sense of ownership/alignment on the inputs that matter the most within the organisation. Encompass finds the most effective way to complete this step is by conducting questionnaires asking leaders to identify and rank each criterion e.g., cost saving vs. customer satisfaction.
Step 3: Develop a prioritisation calculation instrument and visualisation
This is typically an automated tool that allows management to visualise their agreed criteria and weightings applied across all participating programs. Wherever possible, Encompass will leverage our client’s existing tool suite to develop bubble graphs that easily rank programs against complexity and strategic value. Common tools include Power BI or Tableau.
Step 4: Pilot framework with a subset of programs
It is not uncommon to find that the application of agreed, weighted criteria does not appropriately reflect the situation of a real program. This provides leaders the opportunity to calibrate specific criterion, weighting or business logic prior to rolling out the framework more extensively.
Step 5: Apply the framework to the organisation’s inflight programs
This enables objective decision making on those pieces of work that may need to be de-commissioned or amended and providing a criteria for the commissioning of new work.
Step 6: Embed the prioritisation framework into existing governance
The tool provides an initial lens of evidence-based prioritisation however will require additional context and discussions within governance forums to ultimately make the final decisions on prioritisation.
Step 7: Allocate an executive owner and continue to iterate the framework – especially if new business targets, plans or strategic objectives have been set
Prioritisation frameworks are not a ‘fire-and-forget’ tool. To remain relevant, they need an active owner who takes accountability for ensuring the agreed criteria and weightings are still relevant to the organisation’s strategic vision.
Are you ready for transformation?
Encompass Consulting Services partners with state government, federal government, and corporates to develop tailored solutions that turn strategy into results. Driven by evidence-based decisions, data underpins everything we do. We leverage metrics and analytics to identify gaps, inform priorities and drive delivery.
Get in touch to improve your organisation’s objective decision making, measure performance and ultimately achieve business targets.
Reach out to our Lead Client Partner, Francesca Hayes – francescahayes@encompassconsultingservices.com
