.png)
Prioritisation: the discipline that turns strategy into delivery
- lorenaflorian0
- Jun 2
- 6 min read
By James Bawtree
Most organisations do not suffer from a shortage of ideas.
They suffer from too many ideas, too many projects, too many competing priorities, and too few people with enough time, funding and focus to deliver them well.
This is where prioritisation becomes one of the most important leadership disciplines in strategy implementation.
Prioritisation is not simply ranking a list. It is the process of deciding where scarce organisational energy should be directed to create the greatest value, reduce the greatest risk, and improve the likelihood of successful delivery.
At PMLogic, we often see organisations with well-written strategies, strong executive intent and capable teams, but still struggling to deliver. The issue is rarely effort. It is usually focus.
WHY PRIORITISATION MATTERS
Every project consumes more than budget. It consumes:
Executive attention
Specialist capability
Organisational capacity
Stakeholder goodwill
Change appetite
Decision-making bandwidth.
When too many initiatives are approved at the same time, everything appears important, but nothing is truly prioritised. The result is predictable: overloaded teams, delayed decisions, dependency conflicts, diluted benefits and rising delivery risk – does that sound familiar?
As we explored in my book The Strategy Implementation Gap, poor alignment creates a major problem because misaligned initiatives spend money, absorb people’s time and consume management energy. A stronger focus is needed so that only initiatives that genuinely contribute to strategy are funded and resourced.
THE PROBLEM WITH PRIORITISING ONLY BY ROI
Return on investment is useful, but it is not enough.
Some of the most important initiatives do not have the strongest short-term financial return. They may reduce risk, meet regulatory obligations, strengthen capability, enable future transformation, improve sustainability, protect reputation or unlock benefits across a wider program.
This is why portfolio-level prioritisation should consider multiple dimensions.
Management of Portfolios highlights that prioritisation criteria should be tailored to the portfolio or segment objectives and should consider both risk or achievability and return or attractiveness. It also notes that investment criteria should take account of the scale of investment required.
In practical terms, this means asking:
Does this initiative clearly support strategy?
What value will it create or protect?
What benefits will be realised, by whom and when?
What risks will it reduce or introduce?
Do we have the people, funding and capability to deliver it?
What happens if we do not do it?
What should stop, pause or be delayed to make room for it?
COMMON PRIORITISATION FRAMEWORKS
There are many useful frameworks, including RICE, MoSCoW, Kano, value versus effort, and opportunity scoring. Atlassian lists several of these as common product prioritisation frameworks, including RICE, Kano, MoSCoW and value versus effort. (Atlassian)
Weighted Shortest Job First, or WSJF, is also widely used in scaled agile environments. SAFe defines WSJF as a prioritisation model used to sequence work for maximum economic benefit, calculated as cost of delay divided by job duration. (Scaled Agile Framework)
These tools are useful, but they are not a substitute for leadership judgment.
The framework should support the decision. It should not make the decision.
PMLOGIC’S RECOMMENDED PRIORITISATION APPROACH
For organisational portfolios, PMLogic recommends a simple but disciplined approach built around five lenses.
Strategic contribution
Start with strategy. Not a vague reference to strategy, but a clear and measurable contribution.
An initiative should be able to show whether it provides:
Complete contribution to a strategic objective
Partial contribution
Enabling contribution
No identified contribution.
If an initiative does not clearly contribute to strategy, it should either be reframed, deferred or stopped.
Value creation
Value is broader than financial return.
It may include improved service outcomes, customer experience, productivity, compliance, sustainability, workforce capability, social value, public value or long-term resilience.
Management of Value emphasises the importance of unambiguous outputs aligned with organisational strategic goals, quantifying monetary and non-monetary benefits, making effective use of resources and minimising waste.
Risk reduction and opportunity
Risk should not be treated only as a downside factor.
M_o_R 4 frames risk management as a way to create and protect value, and emphasises that risk information should inform decision-making by helping decision-makers understand the relative merits, threats and opportunities associated with alternative courses of action.
This is especially important when comparing initiatives that may not have obvious financial returns but materially reduce exposure or enable future value.
Deliverability
A high-value idea is not a priority if the organisation cannot deliver it.
This is where many prioritisation processes fail. They rank initiatives by attractiveness, but do not adequately test delivery capacity.
A good prioritisation model should assess:
Available funding
Skilled resources
Executive sponsorship
Delivery complexity
Dependency risk
Change impact
Operational readiness
Benefits ownership
As noted in The Strategy Implementation Gap, most organisations have more initiatives than available funds, and they must assess not only the value of initiatives, but also organisational readiness, capability and capacity to implement them.
Balance across the portfolio
The final decision is not just “which project is best?”
It is “which combination of initiatives gives us the best portfolio?”
A balanced portfolio may include:
Mandatory compliance work
Short-term performance improvements
Strategic transformation initiatives
Risk reduction initiatives
Capability-building initiatives
Innovation and future growth options.
Portfolio management should help senior leaders make these trade-offs transparently. MoP provides examples of using categorisation, tailored investment criteria, benefits, risk and graphical portfolio analysis to test alignment and balance.
A PRACTICAL PRIORITISATION MODEL
A simple scoring model could use the following weighted criteria:
Criterion | Example question | Suggested weighting |
Strategic contribution | How strongly does this support agreed strategy? | 25% |
Value and benefits | What measurable value will it create or protect? | 20% |
Risk reduction or opportunity | What exposure does it reduce or opportunity does it enable? | 15% |
Deliverability | Can we realistically deliver it with available capability and capacity? | 20% |
Time criticality | What is the consequence of delay? | 10% |
Sustainability and stakeholder impact | Does it improve long-term outcomes for people, planet and performance? | 10% |
The exact weightings should be agreed by the executive team or investment committee. The important point is not the formula. It is the quality of the conversation the formula enables.
THE ROLE OF AI IN PRIORITISATION
Have recently become an AI-Native trainer, it would be remiss not to include how AI can help strengthen prioritisation, which could be by:
Summarising initiative proposals
Identifying duplicate or overlapping initiatives
Checking alignment against strategic objectives
Comparing benefits, costs, risks and dependencies
Highlighting missing evidence
Modelling different portfolio scenarios
Producing decision papers and dashboards.
However, AI should not be allowed to approve priorities automatically.
The final prioritisation decision remains a leadership decision because it involves judgment, accountability, trade-offs, organisational politics, risk appetite and ethical considerations.
AI can support the analysis. Humans must own the decision.
THE GOVERNANCE QUESTION
A strong prioritisation process requires clear governance.
Senior leaders should agree the:
Criteria
Weightings
Evidence required
Decision rights
Review cycle
Escalation pathway
Process for stopping or pausing initiatives.
P3O guidance notes that failure to prioritise at board level usually results in every project trying to deliver at the same time using the same resources, leading to chaos and significantly increasing the risk of non-delivery.
Prioritisation is therefore not an administrative activity. It is a core governance discipline.
FROM PRIORITY LIST TO DELIVERY DISCIPLINE
A prioritised list is only useful if it changes behaviour.
That means:
Funding follows priorities
Scarce resources are protected for priority work
Lower-priority initiatives are stopped or delayed
Decisions are reviewed regularly
Benefits are tracked after approval
The portfolio is rebalanced as conditions change.
A priority that does not change resource allocation is not a priority. It is a preference.
FINAL THOUGHT
Prioritisation is where strategy becomes real.
It forces leaders to make choices. It exposes whether the organisation is genuinely aligned. It reveals whether the delivery system has enough capacity. It creates the conditions for value, focus and accountability.
The organisations that deliver strategy well are not the ones that say yes to the most initiatives.
They are the ones that know what to say no to.
At PMLogic, we help organisations strengthen prioritisation, governance and delivery capability across portfolios, programs and strategic initiatives.
If your organisation is struggling with competing priorities, overloaded portfolios or delivery misalignment, contact one of the PMLogic team to explore how a more disciplined prioritisation approach can improve focus, value and strategic outcomes.
Comments