The keys to aligning your projects with your digital roadmap

If you want to achieve a successful digital roadmap, thearbitration of project requests is a crucial step. Projects that are candidates to join your project portfolio will have to pass the "Go / No Go" arbitration. And this decision is not a simple one, and will inevitably lead to disappointment. To reduce the risk of this decision - the risk of doing, the risk of not doing - you'll need to evaluate the project requests. Acceptance of the decision will depend on the quality of the evaluation. And the decision you'll make most often will be to say no. The requests are far in excess of your capacity to carry them out. So how do you evaluate project proposals and their viability? How do you ensure that they contribute to the company's overall objectives? How do you identify and prioritize the best projects? How can we ensure their alignment with strategic objectives and the roadmap?
In this article, we give you the keys to prioritizing your projects....and saying no to requests that would clog up your digital roadmap.

How can you say no to avoid traffic jams on your Digital Roadmap?

How can you say no to a project ? Put an end to project bottlenecks and stop falling behind on your digital roadmap? Of course, you can increase capacity... but it will have escaped no one's notice that IT skills are in short supply... Regulating traffic also means saying no to projects. But how do you get people to accept a decision that is difficult to accept, starting with the project owner? How do you turn a "no to a project" into a "yes to the success of the IT master plan"? How can the (common) interest of the project portfolio be accepted at the expense of a project? Below is a summary of the webinar, with key points on how to say no!

Watch the replay of the webinar How to say no to avoid traffic jams on your Digital Roadmap.

Put in place the prerequisites for arbitrating projects and being able to say no to a new project request

The ingredients of the project request validation & prioritization process :

1. Identify the decision-makers: "When we talk about decision-makers, we need to identify the players and give them the information they need to make the decision, and how they respond to the company's challenges ."
2. Defining application instructors: "Defining application instructors makes it possible to define who does what in the project application process.
3. Establish decision-making tools: "We need to define what we need to describe, analyze and compare requests.
4. Define the timing of validation: "Projects should not be validated on an ad hoc basis. Frequencies need to be defined to make decision slots visible. The more distant the project portfolio's visibility, the further apart the committees will be. In general, there are one or two meetings per year, so as not to call the portfolio into question too regularly.

Example of structuring a decision-making body :

• Leaders: PMO - Project Management Officer, CIO - Chief Information Officer
• Mandatory participants: General Management, Business Management
• Optional participants: Project manager, Expert

Objectives of the decision-making committee :

• Present and discuss new prioritized requests
• Provide visibility on schedule projects and the capacity of the CIO
• Validate a proposal to select requests for consideration

Define the fundamentals of the Project Request Form

All requests must be formalized to trigger the arbitration process. It's fundamental, it's obvious... and yet it's a prerequisite that isn't always respected. A simple principle is to impose the formalization of requests through an Expression of Requirements Form. This can easily be formalized in the form of a document or a form. Make it a mandatory element to trigger the validation process.

The Expression of Need Form will :

• understand the objectives and origins of the project request,
• clarify end-user needs and expectations
• define project governance and the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders;
• constraints and risks related to the needs expressed,
• expected benefits
• cost elements to determine feasibility.

3 essential elements for your Expression of Need Sheet: Strategy, Benefits, Risks

The Need Expression Sheet is a tool for collecting and formalizing the information that will inform the decision. The fundamental principle is to have evaluation axes that will enable project requests to be compared with each other. The number of axes varies, but it's advisable to have a maximum of 7, otherwise your Expression of Need sheets may be perceived as too heavy a tool to fill in... But at the very least, your project arbitration should be based on 3 essential axes, otherwise your decision won't be based on sufficient elements... and will make a potential "no" difficult to justify.

Strategy :

• Does the need correspond to one or more aspects of the company's strategy?
• Is the need innovative?
• Can the need accelerate a management strategy? In what way?
• Does the need increase team skills?
• Does the need correspond to a strategy in my master plan?

Earnings axis :

• Is the number of people targeted significant?
• Does the need have a positive impact on our environmental policy?
• Will the need increase sales?
• What is the estimated business/IS workload?
• What is the estimated business cost?
• What is the estimated SI cost?
• Does the need replace an obsolete solution?
• What is the estimated duration?

Risks :

• Does the requirement call for specific knowledge that doesn't exist in-house?
• Does need have an impact on safety?
• Does the need impact on current projects?
• Does the requirement contain sensitive/personal data?
• If the need is not taken into account, does this have an impact on current operations?

Drawing up a Requirements Expression Sheet: moving from Excel to project portfolio management software

With Project Monitor, create your projects from pre-defined templates. Get a complete project and portfolio space: manage your schedule, your resources, your budgets, your risks, your tasks and documents... Project Monitor is a modular tool that adapts to your internal operations and your project authorities.

The Project Monitor application features a project portfolio review area presenting key information for deciding whether to launch new projects. Applications are consolidated and presented one by one by each project representative during a project application review. A Record of Decision feature allows decisions and comments for each project to be consolidated and sent to each committee participant with a single click.