Portfolio Prioritization

[Anon Anon]

We have portfolio's established for all of our IT projects in Clarity. However, we are in the early stages of creating our to-be processes for prioritizing the projects in the portfolio.

I need some input from the community so see Clarity has the capability of generating a weighted score based on a questionairre and populated fields in each project.

Some of the literature I've been researching suggest creating a weight based on categories and components for each project. (Example from "The Advanced Project Management Memory Jogger" Attached). This seems like a major undertaking.

My initial thoughts are that I can create a page similar to the Business Alignment page (or change some of the questions) to gather the information below. Then display each score in a Portfolio view. Additionally, we would need to restrict the number of projects based on the annual approved project budget threshold. I see that the portfolio setup has a field for the budget, but I have yet to investigate how that works.

If anyone has some suggestions or ideas how this can be done, I'm sure the community will be very interested. I'd be surprised if this isn't something most companies are looking for in today's industry with having to do more with less resources.

Thanks,
Ed Olszanowski, PMP
NuStar Energy

Attachment(s)

Portfolio Management Prioritization.xlsx   13 KB 1 version

[Anon Anon]

Hi, Ed!

We have actually done just that. We have created a "Prioritization" sub page on our projects and ideas. Within this page we have sections that contain questions/fields that the user fills out to score the project. Based on what they select, it will generate a calculated (and in some cases the options are weighted - but they don't know that!), score for each section ... then an overall priority score.

We then use some of these scores to add in as columns in our portfolio views so that we can look at detailed financial data, in conjunction with the priority scores we have put in place. Each of the values behind the checkboxes and lookups have a numerical value, which are used to calculate the stoplights. We also use a multiplication factor on the calculated stoplights to weight certain fields/values where applicable.

I've attached a sample screenshot of what this looks like (sorry for the blurrs!).

Hope this helps!
Lori Hagewood

[Anon Anon]

Lori,

I feel relieved to know that this can be done with the tool. Did you have CA resources come in and assist with the build or did your company do this on your own internally? If you did it on your own, did you have some guiding documents to help with the setup?

Thanks for taking the time out to post!

Ed Olszanowski

[Anon Anon]

With a little knowledge of Studio (see the Studio Developers Guide), you can do it too. We have implemented something similiar to what Lori's organization has done. The biggest concern is defining the criteria for creating the priority score, and the associated weighting (if requried).

Regards,
Michael

[Anon Anon]

We did this all in house. :) I've worked with Clarity for over 7 years so I know a little about creating lookups, attributes, and am now somewhat familiar with calculated attributes. Like Michael said, the hardest part is identifying the fields, the scores, the weighting, and the rest is pretty simple! Using Excel to set up the scores and weighting, then doing scenarios off that is helpful sometimes. We basically put the scoring in place, instructed the team to fill out the scoring, and then analyzed the portfolio to do the "litmus test" to see how things shook out. You can always make tweaks along the way.

[Anon Anon]

Lori,

Once I figure out how to capture one input and display a weighted score, then it will be easy to replicate the rest. I like the suggested approach of using Excel first then transferring it to Clarity code.

Thanks again,
Ed

[Anon Anon]

If you run into difficulties with Studio, please feel free to email me.

Regards,
Michael
[e-mail]

[Anon Anon]

Here is one thing to watch out for, as it caused me some serious heartburn when I put this into motion.

We had old lookups which were created, and I had to re-build them. The reason was, the lookup Hidden Key said lookup_code instead of lookup_enum. I had to recreate some of them to be lookup_enum (to go the admin tool, click Lookups, find your lookup, then click Parent Window) because the ID of those values is where your numerical score would be (example, on some we used a scale of 0, 25, 75, 100). That was the main gotcha for us.

The rest was a matter of making sure the scoring and weighting made sense based on various combinations of selections, and making sure your overall score was meaningful. Also note that calculated attributes are not stored in the database, thus they are not available for reporting. They are however stored as objects so if you can pull them in as a column into your portfolio.

Happy to help wherever I can!
Lori
[e-mail]

[Anon Anon]

Hi,

we just started using Portfolio Management (Clarity v12 SP 6) and going to roll out that module very soon.

Thanks for Lari for sharing your expertise.

what are the known drawbacks / issues in Portfolio.

we are using OBS.we want to add an bunch of projects using OBS.If we want to use OBS in portfolio power filter then how you are handling as there are some known bugs.Do we need to add each one individually?. (Let us say that there are no common attributes which i can use other than obs).

When we add an master project in portfolio financial it show the roll up Forecast cost (That is due to the 100% Allocation in Hierarchy) of all the sub projects.We can click the image near by and see all the sub projects costs under it.But If we want to view at individual project forecast cost (i.e If Finance wants to view the cost spend only at the base projects level but they are master projects) is there any way other than making the the change in % Allocation as we also need to show the cost in Hierarchy Financial Tab.

Cheers,
sundar