How to Avoid Prioritization Paralysis in Project Management
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Prioritization Paralysis.
Have you ever walked in a room to do or get something and you completely forget why you walked in there in the first place? This is called “The Doorway Effect.” Scientists have discovered that when we have several tasks on our minds, and then we enter another room, the new surroundings cause us to forget what we were there for.
In hectic and evolving economic conditions, business goals, and stakeholder expectations are always shifting. It’s easy to slip into a similar kind of paralysis when managing our project management portfolios. Wouldn’t it be so much better to have a process that automatically weighs all our projects?
Guess what, that process already exists in Proggio’s Prioritization matrix.
Check out this video below to see how it works:
Proggio’s Prioritization Matrix
With tools like our Prioritization Matrix built into your workflows, prioritization helps teams in the three following ways:
1.Clearing the clutter
With the shifting and changing economic conditions and evolving goals, it is easy to feel that everything is important all at once. This can create a sense of clutter and a lack of focus on what is most important to get the best results for your organization. As Jocko Willink said, “Don’t try to do everything at once or you won’t be successful.”
With an objective tool like a prioritization matrix, your prioritization process becomes less about everything getting done, and more about getting the right things done. It is focused on your business drivers. These drivers are the honest judges about what are the “right” things for your organization’s financial and operational success.
2.Standardizing the process
Having a standardized process for your project prioritization is a great way for your team to scale and also improve the way your team chooses what work will get done and with the best outcomes. In the words of the king of standardization himself, Henry Ford said, “If you think of standardization as the best that you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow; you get somewhere.”
3.Satisfying the demands of stakeholders
Everyone has a good reason for why they do what they do. Everyone has a good reason for what their personal top priorities are. But at the end of the day, all those priorities that people on your team have can very easily become competing priorities for resource allocation.
A prioritization matrix becomes an automated mechanism that enables your team to put feelings aside and focus on what will honestly lead to operational success. With the predetermined weights built into the matrix, teams spend less time figuring out what will get done, and more time getting the work done as each project is scored based on the business drivers.
A world without prioritization paralysis
By using software that has a prioritization matrix, like Proggio, your team can streamline efficiency and focus on the projects that will have the best outcomes. This is a world without prioritization paralysis. So choose a software that will prioritize work for you so you can maximize your operational efficiency, and focus more on getting the results you need to reach success.
Want to dive deeper? Explore Proggio’s Prioritization Matrix in more detail! Schedule a call with one of our Project Pros.
1 https://www.marthastewart.com/8078594/doorway-effect-explained-overloaded-brain
4https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/standardization.html
