How-to Guide: Developing an Integrated Work Prioritization Process

Whether it's an IT PMO or enterprise IT organization, common agreement on priorities is vital in matrix organizations due to the need for people from different teams to collaborate to get anything of business value accomplished. In lieu of a consistent method to evaluate and score inbound requests, individuals, team leads, or managers are left to assess priority based on their own perspectives. As expected, different conclusions almost always result which hampers teamwork.

How do you get past this? Establish guidelines so they become a highly visible standard when they are applied to all demand. When managers are armed with a uniform understanding of how pending work stacks up in terms of priority, they are able to collaborate more effectively to meet common objectives.