One of the common challenges for a company’s information technology (IT) department is how to prioritize IT projects that can deliver the greatest benefits to the business. A criteria-based matrix can be an effective tool in prioritizing the IT projects with just such results. The matrix is a vast improvement over allowing priorities to be set by the biases of certain stakeholders who insist that some projects are more critical than others without any evidence to support their claims.

An eight-step approach to building a criteria-based matrix provides a workable prioritizing system.

Step 1: Identify all key IT project stakeholders, e.g., business managers, IT project managers, business sponsors, etc.

Step 2: Organize a workshop to build the criteria-based matrix and use it to set priorities. Participants will be all the stakeholders identified in Step 1.

Step 3: Outline the projects that need to be evaluated for prioritization, using the knowledge and expertise of the workshop participants.

Step 4: With the involvement of all the participants, identify the criteria that can be used to judge the projects. The approach to identifying criteria may include:

• Identifying practical constraints (e.g., How easy is it to do?).
• Considering the benefits, costs and risks.

Aim for criteria that can be measured objectively and easily, rather than subjectively or with difficulty. The criteria shown in the table below are examples. Organizations or project teams should identify their own criteria.

Step 5: Allocate a weighting number to each criterion on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being least important and 5 being most important to the operation of the business.

Step 6: On a similar scale of 1 to 5, rate each project on its impact on each criterion identified in Step 5, with 1 being the least positive impact and 5 being the most positive impact on that particular criterion.

Step 7: Multiply each rating from Step 6 by the weighting number allocated to each criterion in Step 5 to get the score for each project for each criterion.

Step 8: The matrix is complete when all the weighted scores from Step 7 are added up for each project. The matrix clearly shows which projects have the highest scores, and thus which ones should be the top priority projects.

Conclusion: From the sample criteria-based matrix, it is clear that Projects 3 and 4 need to be done sooner than Projects 1 and 2. The matrix has improved management of IT projects by prioritizing them against identified criteria. The company’s IT department can use this tool to prioritize projects with highest customer and business impact and can then assign appropriate resources to complete these projects within an acceptable time frame.