>> New series 2025: Challenges in project work
In many organizations, projects, initiatives, and tasks compete for scarce resources, often without a clear basis for decision-making. What is really important? Which projects have the greatest strategic value? Without structured prioritization, conflicts, delays, and inefficiency arise, both within individual projects and across the entire project portfolio.
Without uniform evaluation criteria and central control, prioritization becomes a gut decision. The consequences:
These challenges affect not only individual projects, but above all multi-project environments and entire portfolios.
Structured prioritization workshops at project and portfolio level
Well-prepared workshops help to evaluate tasks and initiatives objectively, both within individual projects and in project portfolios. Clear evaluation criteria and a moderated decision-making process are used, with a focus on benefits, risks, effort, and strategic relevance.
Use an evaluation matrix for comparability
An evaluation matrix with uniform criteria (e.g., business value, effort, dependencies, risks) makes initiatives comparable—whether within a project or between multiple projects. Decisions become traceable and documentable.
Establish a project portfolio board with regular reviews
An interdisciplinary steering committee regularly reviews all ongoing and planned projects based on strategic guidelines, resource availability, and current developments. This is the only way to prioritize projects with the highest value contribution and effectively pool resources.
AI-supported systems provide valuable support—both within individual projects and in complex portfolios:
Automatic evaluation of project ideas and tasks based on predefined criteria
Visualization of resource conflicts and strategic orientation
Scenario analyses for reprioritizing entire portfolios
Historical data as a basis for decision-making in dynamic portfolio management
Analyze a project portfolio in terms of benefits, risks, resource requirements, and strategic contribution. Which projects should be prioritized and which could be postponed or canceled?
Prepare a prioritization workshop for the project portfolio. Create an agenda and an evaluation matrix that can be used to objectively evaluate initiatives from different departments.
A project has high political visibility but brings only minor benefits. Simulate the impact on time, budget, and other projects if it is continued, postponed, or terminated.
You want to compare the prioritization of individual work packages in a project with the priority of other projects. How can an evaluation matrix help you make informed decisions about resource allocation?
Create a dashboard for portfolio management. Which KPIs and visualizations support the project portfolio board in making decisions about ongoing and new projects?
If you want to prioritize your projects and tasks clearly, you need objective criteria, transparent decision-making processes, and regular reviews—at both the project and portfolio levels. This ensures that resources are allocated to the most valuable projects and that strategic goals are achieved.
AI-supported analyses enable data-based decisions to be made—in a transparent, efficient, and forward-looking manner.
If you would like to learn more about challenges in project work, especially on the topics of unclear project goals, lack of follow-up, unrealistic schedules, scope creep, conflicts within the team, communication problems and barriers, please take a look at the Expert Knowledge section of our website.
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