July - 2019CONSTRUCTIONTECHREVIEW.COM 19In my 13 years of experience in managing projects, I have learned that `Doing the Right Project' is often more difficult than `Doing the Project Right'. For both, large sources of knowledge are available and finding suit-able processes in these areas is not difficult. However, I often see that when selecting which project to start, the C-suite commonly use only one or two parameters and sometimes just go on their gut feelings.Impact of Selecting a Low Priority ProjectBeside the potential opportunity loss, following are the negative sides starting projects in the wrong order:· Resources assigned to the project such as staff, equipment, and funding, will find their way to other, higher priority projects. There could either be a small trickle over time or a one-time substantial cut.· The project team will sooner or later discover that even though they succeed delivering within the stipulated time and budgettheir invested hours will have a small impact on the company's bottom line.· It will be difficult to request dependent projects to adjust their schedules, resulting in delays.· As high priority scope items are put on hold in favor for this project, it is likely that some of them will be added as change requests, further slowing down the project and causing the team a lot of extra work.As result, despite having a clear project charter and all required resources assigned, the project is heading for doom. The team, trying their best to salvage the situation, realizes that this might affect their careers.The Art of Getting the Right Things DoneMattias HallbergTable 1In such a scenario, what do executives need to do to remedy the situation? Do they need to kick-start an initiative to design a new project approval process? And have all projects--which are about to start-- follow it? Maybe, but it will take time. Is there no easier solution available?A Simple Project Selection ToolLet me present a method I learned from "Scaled Agile Framework", a few years back. This takes a number of parameters into account when calculating project priority and offers some quality insight regarding financial impact of selecting one project over another. And, the additional advantage is that it is super easy to get started ­ just a whiteboard will do fine!First, it introduces the concept of "Cost of Delay," expressed as the sum of Business Value plus Time Urgency plus Risk Reduction. This is to be regarded as the opportunity loss incurred by not having the product released. Now, in this simple model we are not interested in calculating the dollar value BY MATTIAS HALLBERG, CIO AND BOARD MEMBER, WAHL AND CASECIO INSIGHTS
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