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Welcome back to ValueKey Labs — your #1 newsletter for Project related content, which is actually a great Segway into this months newsletter topic.

Prioritisation

Most Senior leaders and portfolio managers I interact with are navigating the same reality right now: tighter capital, reduced discretionary spend, and rising expectations to deliver more with less. Portfolios are overloaded. Resources are stretched across too many competing priorities. And when things start slipping, the instinct is to fix delivery — not to question whether the right projects were approved in the first place.

Most organisations don't have a delivery problem, they have a Prioritisation problem.

Over half of senior leaders (54%) say a lack of prioritisation is their biggest barrier to portfolio delivery. Not resourcing. Not capability. Not methodology. Prioritisation.

When I work with clients to understand why their portfolio isn't delivering, these are the pain points that surface most often.

1. Everything is Priority 1.

Someone introduces a priority ranking system — sensible, well-intentioned. Within three months, 80% of projects are labelled Priority 1. Because everyone knows Priority 2 is where projects go to die. When everything is "urgent", the word stops meaning anything.

2. The loudest voice wins.

Most organisations don’t have a prioritisation process. They have a lobbying process. Projects get approved based on who argued most persuasively — not what delivers most value. The person with the most rigorous business case but who couldn’t command the room? Their project is still sitting in the backlog.

3. You can’t actually list all your projects.

Shadow portfolios. Initiatives living in inboxes and corridor conversations. Projects that survived three restructures and nobody’s quite sure why but continues to chew resources . If you can’t see it, you can’t prioritise it.

4. Zombie initiatives that won’t die.

Every portfolio has them. The project championed by the executive who left six months ago but somehow keeps shuffling forward. PMI research suggests around 20% of projects in most portfolios are effectively waste. They don’t disappear on their own. Someone has to make the call.

5 Projects keep failing — and nobody asks why.

The post-mortem always focuses on delivery. It almost never asks whether the project should have been approved in the first place. Poor strategic fit is one of the most common root causes of project failure. And one of the least discussed.

Sound familiar? Good. Now here’s what to do about it.

Seven Prioritisation principles that consistently shift the dial

1. Create visibility first.

You cannot prioritise what you cannot see. Get a complete, honest picture of everything in flight — including the shadow portfolio nobody mentions in the status meeting.

2. Strategic contribution — not just alignment.

Any project can claim strategic alignment with enough creative writing. Contribution is harder. Ask of every project: “what will be measurably different because we invested in this?” That one question changes the entire quality of the conversation.

3. Replace politics with a decision framework.

Agree your criteria before the projects arrive — not after. A structured, transparent scoring model gives every initiative a fair hearing and removes the lobbying from the equation. Develop scoring criteria that directly links to strategic measures. Pick them. Agree them. Stick to them.

4. Account for constraints and capacity.

A high-value project that takes five years might be worth less right now than a medium-value one that delivers in three months. Don’t approve more than your people, budget, and bandwidth can absorb. And when detailed estimates aren’t available, T-shirt sizing — S, M, L, XL — beats an unknown every time.

5. Selection requires rejection.

Every yes is a no to something else. When trade-offs aren’t made explicit, delivery teams silently absorb the consequences — then get blamed for them.

Say the trade-offs out loud. Put them in the meeting notes. It changes everything.

6. Prioritisation is a rhythm, not an event.

Annual planning cycles aren’t enough. The project that looked essential in January can be genuinely obsolete by April. Build a regular cadence — quarterly at minimum — and ask one honest question: does today’s portfolio still reflect today’s strategy? Not last November’s. Today’s.

7. Ensure transparency and buy-in.

A prioritisation model nobody trusts is just another spreadsheet nobody uses. Make the model visible. Involve the right people in scoring — it improves the data and builds commitment to the outcome. And when a project doesn’t make the cut, say why. Clearly. With data. The goal isn’t just a ranked list. It’s a process people believe in enough to stop lobbying around.

You've seen the pain points. You've seen what fixes them. The question now is a simple one — which of those seven principles is your organisation not doing yet? Hope this helped.

Until next time,

Guy Thorpe - aka The Project Guy