Manage Your Project Portfolio, 2nd Edition

Use Your Organization’s Context to Rank Projects

Sometimes, assigning points is too difficult, or you really can’t tell which project is most valuable. In that case, look at the entire context: where you are as an organization regarding your portfolio management, who’s waiting for your product to solve their problems (and reduce waste), your product’s position in its life cycle, and the overall health of the product development organization.

First, you have to define your organization’s context. If you’re new to managing the portfolio, you may have a bazillion projects, all of which are emergencies and all of which need to be done now. In that case, you will have to make choices, but you’ll need to look at who’s waiting for which release, ...