The
Prioritization Practice
The
Story:
We’re sitting in the
conference room of the president of a large health insurance
company, with all of his senior managers, including the CIO.
They have just completed a prioritization exercise on the entire
IT development portfolio, and have understood for the first time
that there are a number of projects in the portfolio which will
produce little value to the business, representing over a third
of the development budget. The following conversation ensued:
President to CIO: Are we working on any of these "bad"
projects?
CIO:
Of course, we’re working on them all. That’s what we do. They
were all approved by the managers in this room.
President: Anybody here disagree with our assessments on
these projects?
(Silence
in the room)
President: How much do we save if we stop?
CIO:
$25 million.
President: Then stop.
The Result:
In that
moment, the management team returned $25 million in capital to
the company for other uses…and not one senior manager complained
that he wasn’t going to get what he needed from IT. How is this
possible?
By instituting a business-based
and business-manager driven prioritization process, and applying
it to all projects equally, across the entire corporation, the
management team was able to choose the best projects for the
company, and reach across-the-board consensus on priorities.
For more details on how to do this, read about the
NIE Prioritization Approach.
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