Project Prioritization
A common topic but I haven’t found a satisfying answer so far. Here is my take on it.
Why does an engineering project exist? The fundamental reason is the business need. Engineers are paid to solve customer problems that provide also business values. At any moment, there will be tons of problems out there to be solved, which means we can kick off tons of engineering projects. It is obvious that any business will have limited resources and had better focus on a handful ones that provide the highest ROI. The project prioritization then is about ROI.
With ROI, still it is not sufficient, because still we can’t try to calculate ROIs for all project candidates. The projects have to work together to form a coherent value proposition. People come to a product because various parts of the solution work together to stitch the whole experience together. A product with a list of random features won’t be successful. There needs to be a thread that keeps features together. That is the Vision and the Strategy. The project has to fit for a Vision and a Strategy in a business. That is the second aspect.
Now with ROI and strategy, we can create a short list of candidates. In our case, we have the strategy of being the best billing product for our hero segment customers. It should let us drill in to the problems our hero segment customers face and provide solutions that provide the best ROI for them. There might be one more issue. For different projects, the measurement on business value could be different. For one project, it is the ACV (annual contract value) impact. For another, it is the NPS (net promoter score). One is to drive growth and the other is likely linked to retention. How do you choose between those two? First of all, they might not have to be mutually exclusive. We can do both at the same time. In the end, there should be a model out there that links the NPS to financial performance of the business, and we can use it to compare with the ACV value.
This all sounds simple but it requires someone to spend the time and clarify the strategy. Once the strategy is clear, we need a framework to translate it to execution across the organization. OKR is a great choice for it. It allows teams to prioritize their work based on the strategy set by the leadership team and show impact and progress of their work. The prioritization on a team now is which project has the best chance to deliver their chosen OKRs.
All in all, there is the leadership strategy determined on ROI. Then strategy is translated to OKRs as a framework of execution. Teams will buy into the OKRs and deliver results accordingly.
