From driving your backlog to driving your strategy: How prioritization delivers performance
About this webinar
Your backlog can be perfectly organized and still leave the real decisions untouched: what matters most, what gets resources, and who owns the consequences? David Dunning, a founder and Director of the BIG CIC, and Dan Dures join host Stuart Easton to show where prioritization fits inside Business Integrated Governance (BIG) and what that changes for a PMO or EPMO.
What you'll hear
- If your PMO keeps explaining what it does, treat that as a warning sign. David points to independent assurance, seniority and access to corporate data as the usual gaps. An integrated model gives the PMO a defined remit, shared data and more senior standing.
- Organize the backlog, define value, choose the projects. Dan frames these as a prioritization process. AHP and pairwise comparison expose where people value things differently.
- The matrix is only a picture. Stuart makes the distinction: the chart shows the result. Prioritization is how each project earned its place; buy-in makes it useful.
- A fair process gives the organization the right to say no. Dan makes accountability explicit: who is accountable for delivering value, and who is accountable for making do with what remains.
- An EPMO can take on the strategy-to-delivery balance. David sets out two routes: own the balancing of change, BAU, products and value creation, or connect with whoever already owns that ground.
Research in context
Dan's case is that the fight over what counts as value has to come before the fight over individual projects.
A 2011 meta-analysis in the Journal of Business Research of 23 samples found a modest positive link between management agreement on strategy and organizational performance, clearest when the agreement was about priorities.
How this connects to TransparentChoice
Finance, leadership and the front line define value differently, and a ranking does not tell leadership which combination of work the organization can actually support.
TransparentChoice turns that into an explicit portfolio choice:
- Put priorities in the open. Use AHP and pairwise comparison with input from the people who know each initiative.
- Apply the real limits. Use funding, capacity and other constraints to compare feasible combinations of work.
- Make the trade-offs visible. See what each choice includes, excludes or displaces.
- Bring shared demand into the same decision. Add BAU, maintenance and other work drawing on the same capacity.
Leadership decides what to fund, continue, change, defer or stop.
Learn more
Join the next live webinar
How to Incorporate Strategic Portfolio Management into the PMO
Follow a practitioner's build of a strategic PMO, from cascading strategy through the organization to executive reporting shaped around the decision leaders face. Watch the webinar.
Bridging the Strategy-Execution Gap
A new priority lands on capacity that is already committed, forcing leadership to decide what stays, what changes and what gives way. Watch the webinar.
Harbor Foods: Winning Executive Buy-in Through Prioritization
See how a PMO turns an accumulated backlog into business-led choices, with business leaders setting the criteria used to score the work. Read the case study.
Speakers
David Dunning is a Business Integrated Governance thought leader and founder of the Business Integrated Governance CIC and Deep Team. He also serves as Chairman of CPS, helping organizations improve strategy delivery, governance, and business agility.
Dan Dures is VP of Customer Success at TransparentChoice. With senior leadership experience at Just Eat, dunnhumby, and Home Retail Group, he brings expertise in data, strategy, and customer insight. He helps PMO leaders focus on projects that deliver real strategic value.
Stuart Easton is Founder & CEO of TransparentChoice. He works with leaders and portfolio teams on decisions about which investments and initiatives to fund, continue, change, defer or stop when priorities compete for limited funding and capacity. His work combines structured decision-making with practical portfolio choices.