Anticlue

Organization Prioritization: A couple steps forward

Started rolling out the prioritization criteria for the project in the Liaison meetings this week, overall it was a good start. I have a couple liaison meeting responsibilities -Radiation Oncology and Cardiology. Items I’ve learned from past experiences, is that honesty is the best policy, and honest communication is necessary.

First, we discussed the structure and roles of the organization and reviewed the new process.

All project requests coming into IS will be via a standard form to be posted on the intranet. They will need to be agreed to by the project sponsor and executive sponsor upon submission.

Here is a sample of our current project request form:

The key point is as a part of the request process to have a strong understanding of business need, and how success will be measured as a part of the request. To link the tactical requests to strategic planning, we have the current decision criteria. As the process matures, this criteria is linked to our strategic goals. The section on strategic relevance is an opportunity to articulate the decisions behind the ratings. I’m currently finishing up a guideline on a baseline of the criteria. The benefits realization plan is a way to clearly identify the improvements being offered by our solution.

The next key activity was to review our prioritization criteria and walk through the exercise of prioritizing our current work. A couple of questions and outcomes arose, which were insightful and I’d like to share.
Question: What happens if the strongest departmental request is not rated higher than the others?
Answer: Based upon the rating scale and weighting, we should be in good shape. Let’s walk through that request. The key in this request was it had the required application maintenance, and technology building block criteria.

Question: What number do we need to reach to assure this gets done?
Answer: Honestly, I don’t know. We have to establish a well founded decision which can be supported when asked by our executive leadership. If the project is simply not rated with enough priority, I’ll be happy to work with you to present it to our evaluation council (murder board) to help gain resources for the project.

Organizational change is the fine art of explaining the sense of urgency, sharing the vision of the future, listening to other’s concerns, and engaging in a dialogue which fosters a shared understanding. The good news was with this customer base, we have successfully started the process.