My brain just melted. Or exploded. Or both.
According to recent PMI research, 70% of the time, senior executives are not engaged in the project prioritization process. Now this just blows my little brain to pieces and here’s why.
Why this statistic blows my mind
- The executive team is responsible for selecting the strategy of the business. That strategy is useless if not well-executed and project prioritization and selection is the bridge from strategy to execution. Do the executives in 70% of companies really not care whether or not the bridge is a sound one? I just can’t believe that.
- Executive support and participation is one of the clearest predictors of project success (or failure). If the executives aren’t engaged in the project prioritization and portfolio selection process, how can they be effective sponsors for the projects in the portfolio?
- Most PMOs are very concerned about executive sponsorship, yet relatively few have taken it upon themselves to put in place a strong, collaborative project prioritization and selection process, one that appropriately involves the executives. This leaves the whole portfolio open to a) under-delivering value (and research suggests that 80+% of IT portfolios under-deliver by at least 25%) and b) high project failure rates.
Why don’t executives engage in project prioritization?
So I’m left wondering why there’s so little engagement from executives. I have some ideas, but would love to hear your thoughts too.
- Picking projects is often a very politically charged process. As such, there’s little upside to getting involved if you don’t have to, so some executives stay away. Now this is a shame as a well-structured project prioritization process (based on analytical hierarchy process, AHP, for example) will largely eliminate politics.
- Most organizations suffer from “stove pipes”. This is a very common disease that prevents communication, encourages “local optimization” and generally leads to turf-wars. If you’re running a stove-pipe, it’s like you’re in your own little kingdom. There’s little incentive to engage in corporate-wide discussions about resources, projects and budgets… because you might lose control.
- Many PMOs (or EPMOs) are not confident enough to start a campaign to change the way things are done. They are battling momentum (“we’ve always done it this way”), they are fighting culture, they don’t feel empowered. But you can, and should, start the conversation and keep re-starting it if you get blocked. There is a lot of information in this blog to help you get going and this is a fun little infographic that can help start the conversation.
Where to go from here?
If you recognize yourself and your organization somewhere in this blog, please watch this free webinar. It’s a case-study about how to do prioritization in a political situation. It’s a really powerful case as the governance process was very unusual (around 80 people involved in selecting projects – these guys have the opposite problem to “lack of engagement”), yet a structured approach let them get buy-in. The case touches on executive engagement, people skills, facilitation, politics and org structure.
The presenter, Peter Miles, and the team at Catalyze Consulting have worked with some of the world’s largest organizations, both private and governmental, to help them put in place better prioritization and selection processes. He really knows how to get this through the organization.
SOURCE: https://blog.transparentchoice.com/executives-not-engaged-in-project-prioritization
