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Project funding is drying up.
When funds are scarce, as they are in these times of worldwide economic uncertainties, you can help ensure good IT investment decisions by alerting senior management to simple project prioritization methods.
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Paul Revere had it right with his famous midnight ride in 1775. Riding his horse at breakneck speed, he alerted the sleeping Boston-area citizens about the grave danger of invasion by British troops. Countless lives were saved, and history was made.
Today, we in IT face dangers that demand this same quick action. People in your entire enterprise may be surprised by imminent, unexpectedly deep spending cutbacks, including some within IT. Don't let anyone be caught off- guard. Be a modern-day Paul Revere and awaken your sleeping colleagues to the need for methods for setting project priorities that will help senior management make better spending decisions.
Without better prioritization methods in these times of tighter funding, enterprise success is threatened. Heightened emotions may smother sound reasoning. Thus, right projects may be canceled; wrong ones may survive; or the enterprise may weaken or fail.
Since your midnight ride will awaken slumbering management, be ready to arm them with these four tips--which are both workable and appealing--for designing project prioritization methods:
(1) Use common business criteria for all competing
project solutions.
Scarce spending means that technology proposals will more frequently compete
with general business investments. Thus, truck fleet expansion, store
remodeling, or special advertising promotions might be your new, often
vicious, funding competition. Keep the fight fair by picking evaluation
criteria that reflect the type of investments being compared. Avoid typical
"techie" shoot-out criteria such as, "This project improves data integrity,"
which means little to managers in any case. Instead, recast it to reflect
its real business impact by saying, for example, "This project encourages
customer repeat purchases by enhancing confidence in the accuracy of our
advice."
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