Portfolio prioritization

Purpose

Compare initiatives on a common evidence base and identify the portfolio that fits the available strategic, financial, and delivery constraints. Make the trade-offs visible: value versus effort, risk, dependency readiness, capacity demand, budget draw, and consequence of delay.

Scope

Use the initiative register, strategy map, business cases, benefit estimates, delivery estimates, risk register, dependency map, resource capacity table, budget, and current roadmap. Assess active, proposed, paused, and mandatory initiatives separately when the portfolio policy distinguishes them.

Excluded: approving investments, changing project status, reallocating people, or inventing benefits, scores, dependencies, or capacity.

Data basis

• Initiative register with initiative_id, sponsor, stage, strategic themes, benefit, effort, start date, duration, risk, dependency, and status.
• Business cases, roadmap milestones, resource capacity by role and period, budget envelope, and actual spend.
• Portfolio scoring model, mandatory-work rules, risk appetite, and decision rights.

Result

Produce a prioritization sheet with criteria, raw values, normalized scores, weights, weighted total, constraint flags, dependency readiness, recommended action, and citations. Write a portfolio memo with ranking, capacity and budget cut lines, grouped dependencies, trade-offs, and open evidence.

Quality criteria

• Every score traces to a field, calculation, or policy rule; missing inputs remain unscored.
• Mandatory initiatives are not compared as discretionary work without an explicit policy rule.
• Capacity and budget totals reconcile by period, role, and currency or unit.
• Ranking ties and sensitivity to a missing or changed weight are visible.
• “Start,” “continue,” “defer,” “combine,” and “stop” recommendations state their evidence.

Instructions

Apply the supplied scoring model exactly, including direction of benefit and effort scales. Normalize only within the defined portfolio population. Check constraints after scoring: a high-value initiative that exceeds available capacity remains flagged rather than silently moved into the plan. Trace dependency readiness to predecessor status and target date. Treat benefits as estimates unless the business case records an achieved result. Show mandatory work outside the discretionary ranking and identify any initiative whose data is too incomplete for a defensible recommendation.

Adapt before use

• Add the portfolio scoring model, strategy themes, initiative register, business cases, and roadmap.
• Define capacity units, budget periods, currencies, risk scales, and mandatory-work treatment.
• Specify weights, cut-line rules, tie handling, and sensitivity expectations.
• Name the portfolio decision roles and allowed recommendation vocabulary.