For many PMOs, it can be tempting to dive straight into delivery. But doing everything at once doesn’t mean you’re being efficient (or making an impact).
For many PMOs, it can be tempting to dive straight into delivery. But doing everything at once doesn’t mean you’re being efficient (or making an impact).
In reality, the average organization loses about 11.4% of their investment due to poor project performance. And much of that comes from working on the wrong things. After all, when organizations take on too much or base decisions on intuition rather than data, they end up spreading resources thin and underdelivering on strategic goals.
Why prioritization matters in project management
Prioritization ensures that projects align with your strategic goals and that limited resources—such as time, budget, and talent—are allocated efficiently. High-performing organizations are 2.5 times more likely to excel at project selection, resulting in higher ROI, better risk management, and more predictable delivery timelines.
The good news: Adopting a purposeful, step-by-step approach can help PMOs focus on the right projects to maximize both impact and return on investment (ROI).
How to know if you have a prioritization problem: Root causes and signs
Many organizations remain unaware that their prioritization process is flawed until they’re already feeling the consequences, like wasted resources, delayed deadlines, disengaged teams, budget overruns, and missed strategic goals. More specifically, a few telltale signs can flag the existence of problems in the project selection process:
- Your teams are stuck in "firefighting mode.” In other words, you’re constantly jumping from one urgent issue to another instead of making progress on high-impact initiatives.
- It’s unclear how projects ladder up to business goals. Teams are unsure how individual projects tie back to broader business goals—leading to wasted effort on low-impact tasks while mission-critical work gets sidelined.
- Leadership priorities shift frequently. Pausing one project midstream to accommodate sudden requests can lead to incomplete or poor-quality outcomes, as well as burnt-out teams.
And these symptoms of poor project prioritization aren’t just operational hiccups; they’re often red flags your selection process is reactive, inconsistent, or missing altogether. organizational effectiveness, making it harder to achieve ROI goals over time. To improve performance, project organizations must overcome 4 key hurdles.
4 common challenges in prioritizing projects
1. Subjectivity
Decisions often rely on the opinions of influential stakeholders (HIPPO effect) rather than objective analysis. For example, a CEO may insist on fast-tracking a flashy AI-powered feature based on an article they read, despite internal data showing low customer demand. Meanwhile, a smaller, high-impact usability improvement that was backed by user research and engineering estimates gets postponed. Since no objective prioritization framework is in place, the loudest voice prevails, not the most valuable initiative.
2. Lack of visibility
Dependencies and resource overlaps across departments aren't always obvious. Imagine a firm where the marketing and product teams both plan major launches in the same quarter, unknowingly relying on the same UX design team. As deadlines approach, the design team becomes overwhelmed, forcing last-minute compromises and missed deadlines. If shared resource calendars or dependency maps had been used, the clash could have been avoided.
3. Inconsistent criteria
Without standard scoring methods, project comparisons are inconsistent. Within the same organization, one department may prioritize projects based on potential revenue, another on customer feedback, and a third on technical feasibility. Without a common evaluation framework, leadership struggles to compare initiatives fairly. This may lead to confusion and time wasted in meetings, debating subjective benefits instead of making data-driven decisions.
4. Inflexibility
Once priorities are set, organizations can struggle to adjust them when new information or constraints emerge. Take a company that works on a 6-month product overhaul, then halfway through, a competitor releases a disruptive feature that shifts customer expectations. Despite this, the team continues with the original plan because the roadmap is already locked and change requires layers of approvals. The inability to pivot costs the company valuable market relevance.
The examples above highlight the significant cost of failing to identify the right initiatives and give them priority access to resources. On the flip side, introducing a centralized selection and ranking framework can cut time-to-market for new products or services and increase resource utilization.
A 3-step framework to select the right projects for maximum ROI
By defining strategic goals, setting clear criteria to meet them, and scoring projects objectively against that criteria, PMOs can confidently focus on the work that drives the most value.
1. Define strategic objectives
Clearly defining strategic objectives is the foundation of effective project prioritization. Without a shared understanding of what success looks like, teams may invest time and resources into initiatives that might feel important but actually do little to move the business forward.
What are your business’s top goals right now?
- Trying to boost customer retention? You may prioritize efforts to optimize onboarding, support, and engagement to reduce early churn.
- Expanding into new markets? You may prioritize efforts like localization and alliance management to support smoother expansion.
- Aiming to cut costs? Focus on implementing automation and productivity tools.
2. Establish evaluation criteria
Beyond strategic alignment, several other factors should be considered when prioritizing projects for a portfolio. These commonly include:
- Expected financial return/ROI
- Time to value
- Risk and complexity
- Compliance and regulatory needs
- Resource availability
Because of their line of business or operational model, some organizations may also want to factor in indicators like customer satisfaction, brand perception, employee engagement, or innovation quality.
3. Score and rank projects objectively
The best decision criteria are not enough unless they’re consistently applied to guide choices. For example, Project A may score high on ROI and strategic alignment but face resource constraints, while Project B is easier to execute but offers lower returns. How do you determine which delivers the greatest impact and ROI?
Using a scoring model reveals where trade-offs are acceptable. A common approach is to use a 1–5 scale for each factor, then calculate a weighted score. Many organizations implement a formal scoring model—such as the RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) or MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won’t have) methods—to evaluate and rank projects.
Once defined, apply your weighted scoring model to each project in your pipeline. Specialized PPM software can automate this and reduce bias.
Tools & technologies to support stronger project priorities
Project portfolio management software and strategic portfolio management platforms play a critical role in enabling data-driven prioritization and significantly boosting ROI.
It all starts with providing the PMO with a single source of truth for all project and portfolio data. Bringing all projects into a single platform assists in standardizing data structure and eliminating siloed spreadsheets. This way, managers gain instant insight into project milestones, resource utilization, and risk status, enabling faster and more confident decision‑making.
Case in point:
- Global entertainment company Spin Master used a centralized PPM system to clean up their data backlog, leading to impressive efficiency gains.
- Ford’s Technology Integration team leveraged custom templates to standardize Stage and Gate processes for different types of work, improving decision-making.
- UCB Pharmaceuticals consolidated 15 years of project data and systems into one platform, improving system startup time by 50% and boosting Gantt chart display speeds by five times.
The most advanced PPM and SPM solutions don’t just organize data, they enable strategic foresight with built-in scenario planning tools that letg PMOs model “what-if” situations to explore scenarios such as budget cuts or accelerated timelines. As AI capabilities mature, these platforms are becoming even better at using predictive analytics to estimate ROI and completion likelihood.
PepsiCo: A pipeline management success story
Another great real-world example of successful pipeline management comes from global food and beverage giant PepsiCo. They digitized their innovation processes with a strategic portfolio management (SPM) tool, which brought them real-time data and automated workflows. This boost in transparency improved project management, and stronger financial analysis. By leveraging scenario planning, PepsiCo streamlined its pre-approval workflows, cut through red tape, and enabled senior leaders to make faster, more strategic decisions. The result: a sharper focus on high-impact initiatives that help keep the company ahead of competition.
Start improving project prioritization today
The benefits of getting prioritization right are real: more strategic focus, stronger ROI, and better use of limited resources. The path forward isn’t complicated, but it does require structure for PMOs to ensure they're investing in projects that truly move the needle.
The advanced strategic portfolio management capabilities of Planisware Enterprise help you determine which projects to prioritize by combining your business priorities, customized evaluation models, and real-time progress tracking into a single interface.
You can find more practical detail about how investing in smarter data management systems can improve project selection and ranking across your organization in our guide: Mastering Project Prioritization: A Guide for PMOs & IT PMOs.
Better yet, see for yourself: book your one-on-one demo of Planisware Enterprise now.
