How do you know what’s important?
You’ve sat down and worked out your measurement strategy and it’s now being applied to every project. Nice work.
How can you take that thinking and use it to get smarter about how you work, what you focus on and where you put your resources? Good strategy is optimum effort for maximum reward, after all.
You are here
Do you know where your projects are right now?
If not, Plot them on a prioritisation matrix for a quick view. Hopefully you’ll be able to get a better picture of value vs effort.
Once you’ve done that, I recommend reading Itamar Gilad’s blog, Why The Impact Effort Prioritization Matrix Doesn’t Work as he introduces a whole other dimension to the model, including less generators.
How many of your projects probably sit in the money pit or loss generator areas of this adjusted model?
Project intake: prioritise as you go
Ok, so you’ve taken stock of where you are. Can you can pull the plug on those wasteful projects?
I dare you.
I double dare you.
But, regardless. It’s all about where you go from here. Because you’ve told the CFO that their leadership programme is being cancelled as it adds no value to the overall business strategy, this next step is easy. You need to work with your stakeholders on a rapid project discovery:
What is the problem?
Who is it for?
How is it aligned to the business goals?
What are the potential gains? (Can you quantify it?)
How big is it?
I’m not saying those questions are easy to answer. Nor will your stakeholders enjoy playing this game with you. Especially if you use their time & effort to put the request into a queue. There’s a whole approach to consulting skills and project discovery that I might right about in the future. but for now, at least start with those questions.
If you want to add more value, you need collaboration. And you need detail to enable effective prioritisation.
Upfront effort pays off later in time saved & a structured, ordered team.
Clear roles for better resourcing
Who’s in your team & what do they do?
I come from a background of creating content. I had teams of people who made stuff. And I had PMs who pushed projects forwards, owning timelines and budget. They had clear roles.
It might not that be that clear-cut for you at a team level. When you zoom in to the project level, I bet it is. so make it. Define the roles for each project team. When you know what they are doing, you can identify when they’ll be needed.
Boom. There you are. Straight away your resourcing problems get a little clearer. The dream, how about if you could map your team members into weekly blocks?
It is possible. But you also need a good handle on knowing the size of projects.
Estimating project size
This is a big one. And a near impossible one. There is only one truth I know: you will always underestimate the size of the project. So add 30%.
How I approach this is by weeks. So I know that a discovery phase will last 1-2 weeks. I know that it takes 1 week to make a stock film, or 2 weeks to shoot & edit interviews on location. I know that you can you create 10mins or so of quality digital content in a week. Etc etc etc.
A lot of that is 10 years’ experience of leading teams. It’s my gut. But you can shortcut that by asking your teams. And getting them involved in the rapid project triage.
You know your team (blog 3, united teams). You know who will under/overestimate work. Get their view, add yours & discuss.
You might find it easier to use the Scrum approach where you give projects a size: Small, Medium, Large etc… At some point you need to attribute time to those projects. It doesn’t need to be perfect. Just enough to give you a calendar so you can resource plan.
Knowing the project sizes, having an effective prioritisation approach and clear roles in your team, those are the building blocks you need. Get those in place, practice. You will find your own approach that works for you, your team & your customers.
You can estimate the size of work, prioritise it & have a reasonably reliable resourcing map to play with. You’ve just got to keep working at it. I have faith in you.
The end?
This is actually the end of 5 blogs I wanted to write that are vaguely connected. It’s not the end of the story. There are so many forks that I want to follow. So stay tuned. And please do suggest anything you’d enjoy my musings on.