Defining the IT Roadmap in Life Science - Part III

           Welcome to part three of this blog series, click here for a link to Part One or here for Part Two.

Before beginning a prioritization process, it is essential to align the organization on how decisions will be made. Specifically, on the criteria used to evaluate and rank projects across the organization. The criteria is often derived from both internal and external drivers.
Internal drives typically include factors such as financial resources, staff availability, pending transformations (e.g. M&As). I also advise looking carefully at the organization's ability to adsorb additional change.
External drivers typical involve customer commitments, market conditions, evolving threats and opportunities, and possibly regulatory requirements.

Step 4: Managing the Portfolio - Managing the Project List

With your criteria in hand, a weighted project list can now be developed. A sample is show below. It lists each project (which is in support of a capability). In this example, five dimensions are used for evaluation: Strategy Alignment, Revenue Growth Potential (top-line growth), Cost Savings (Bottom line savings), Compliance (regulatory) Criticality, and finally Workforce Development/Retention. Again, these are just examples, any criteria could be used.
They key is gain alignment on the methodology within the organization. When the list has all the projects and criteria identified, you can compute a relative score for each project and rank accordingly. Inevitably there will be intangibles which will require careful consideration.
In commercial organization, it is easy to invest solely in revenue biased projects over the SG&A programs, e.g. some Human Resources initiatives. Rankings produced by this process should inform the overall project selection process, not define. As in most case, human judgment is required.
The chart in and of itself, can be difficult to interpret. For this reason, bubble charts can be developed to help with overall visualization. On the chart below, each project is placed based on its Revenue potential (Y axis) and Cost Savings Potential (X Axis). Project sizes are depicted by the size of each bubble.

Step 5: Developing the Delivery Plans
The final steps is to initiate the process to develop an overall program plan following by project plans. Illustrating an overall delivery plan can help begin establishing and confirming expectations.
Final Thoughts
Regardless of well planned, chance a project will complete on time, on budget, and with requirements satisfied is very small. The old saying "Life is 10% of what happens, 90% hour you react" applies here. Nothing is static so the process of evaluating projects must be an ongoing process.



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