The Product Pulse

When you think about it, the aim of ANY organization is to maximize resources toward high value. That's easier said than done. What's important to one department may be less important to another. And often it's difficult to determine what's of highest value to the overall organization when multiple parties, each with crucial initiatives, are competing for the same limited resources.

Value and Risk scoring can help. Attributes for determining the value of a project or program may include items such as:

• Regulatory / Contractual Impact
• Socio-Political Impact
• Strategic Alignment and Importance
• Financial Return / Profitability
• Competitive Advantage Impact
• Business Operations Impact / Reliability / Efficiency
• Probability of Commercial Success
• Organizational and Market Leverage / Reusability / Opportunity Enablement

The above scores can be weighted, averaged, and compared with a risk score to come up with a single composite score. Typical risk areas to assess are:

• Technical Complexity
• Program Complexity
• Existing Skill Base
• Availability of people and facilities

Alternatively, some organizations simplify this into a single "Complexity" score that can be subjectively determined and set to low, medium, or high.

Having scores is not a cure-all however. The best alignment of resources should never be left to an automated system. Though a score can give a general hint at a project's relative value, ultimately, what is needed is dialogue.

Use your personal budget as an example. If you have limited funds / resources, and your spouse has important purchases coming up, and you do as well, you may need to have a discussion to evaluate tradeoffs and / or work together toward a creative solution. It is the same in business. Meanwhile, a well thought-out scoring system can help speed up the decision process.