Manage Your Project Portfolio, 2nd Edition

Rank the Projects by Risk

If you’re working with other people to decide about the project portfolio for the organization, recognize what senior management needs to know: the risk of doing this project, what the project will provide, and whether the return outweighs the risk.

You may have seen risk/return decision matrixes like this before:

You’re not supposed to start the high-risk projects, because they’re too risky. You’re not supposed to start the low-return projects, because they don’t provide enough value to the organization. I have two questions: How are you supposed to know in advance? And is there a way to start some of those high-risk ...