IT departments are often delegated the task of prioritizing a long list of project proposals. Make the process fair and consistent by using a reliable quantitative method.

The Challenge

IT organizations face a list of project requests that, with few exceptions, exceed its capacity. As IT projects are generally part of overall business initiatives, business management should be responsible for determining the relative importance and priority of these requests, or at least of the key initiatives. However, the reality is that IT is often asked either to make the prioritization decisions or, at the least, to propose a priority list for final management review. IT becomes the key player in making decisions regarding what and what doesn't get done.

There are several aspects of priority-setting that pose a challenge:

• Long lists. It is extremely difficult to subjectively compare the relative merits of even twenty competing...