Just because someone has an idea for a project, doesn’t mean it should go ahead.

An organisation’s process for deciding which projects get dropped or deferred (often a euphemism for “dropped”) and which ones get approved is sometimes intuitive, informal, ineffective and inconsistent; the equivalent of rolling dice or the random throwing of darts. Each project has different costs, benefits and risks, and rarely are these known in advance with much certainty.

Rational project selection is an important process, but it’s not easy and many organisations struggle with issues such as running too many projects at once, misaligned business goals and projects, poor co-ordination between projects, lack of management commitment, deficient cross-functional collaboration, resistance to change, reluctance to terminate poorly performing projects, no attempt to check if project benefits have been realised, and finding the right balance between smaller short-term projects that … Read More »