AD-00012

A group had 180 IS projects to prioritize using 21 "weighted" criteria.  They used two Cross Impact steps and an Excel spreadsheet to decide on the top 50 projects to consider.

They first rated the 180 projects against 3 company strategic objectives for how well the project supported the objective.  The results were exported immediately to an Excel spreadsheet, where the objectives were weighted as the company specified, and the projects were sorted according to the weights.  They drew a line under the 70th project.  Then they did a "reality check" and moved some of the projects that appeared below the line to above the line (if they happened to be prerequisites for projects appearing above the line).  Likewise, some projects were moved below the line.  The group attitude at this point was one of cooperation, collaboration, and discovery.

The top 70 projects were then placed in the second Cross Impact step and rated against the 21 criteria for how well they satisfied the criteria.  Again, at the end of the step, the results were viewed in their own spreadsheet with the 21 weighted criteria.  The top 50 projects were carried forward for implementation that year.

The participants said that what they accomplished in one day using Meetingworks had taken 3 months the previous year, and at that time there wasn’t nearly as much ownership of the results as there was after the Meetingworks session.  Collaboration in this type of exercise is essential!