Engagement: Strategic Evaluation of Projects

Client

A leading technical software vendor.

Challenge

Allocate resources among scores of projects.

Background

The company used a “new product x new market” matrix to filter candidate projects. This framework is appropriate for assessing risk, but not for broad evaluation of projects. Project managers had difficulty understanding the criteria for resource decisions. The company had a backlog of dozens of candidate projects that had not been evaluated over several years.

Solution

Score projects by quantifying market attractiveness and competitive strength. Rely on inputs from domain experts in many fields to derive quantitative scores that were combined in a linear decision support model.

Client Impact

Brought discipline and buy-in to resource decisions. Mass-produced terse evaluations and project plans for dozens of projects with limited resource commitment. Eliminated backlog of unevaluated investment proposals. Trained managers and engineers in how to think in the same strategic terms, which improved communications and buy-in to decisions.