Impactful Prioritization: Building Your PMO’s MVP for Change
About this webinar
How much prioritization process do you actually need to get started? Dan Dures and Gregor Androjna argue for a minimum viable approach: understand the business problem first, add only enough structure and data to support real choices, get to a useful result quickly and then increase maturity as the organisation learns.
Most PMOs cannot stop projects or move resources themselves, so ranking projects on its own may change very little. Dan and Gregor describe a different role: the PMO as a value navigator that brings leadership workable choices rather than only delivery problems, and connects value, constraints and buy-in so that scarce capacity becomes part of the decision rather than another complaint from delivery.
Gregor illustrates the approach with an electricity grid operator where leadership believed priorities were clear, while delivery teams experienced everything as priority one. A steering group clarified the priority order, low-value work was removed and project starts were staggered so fewer initiatives competed at once. Gregor describes the change as relatively light on data, relying on focus and culture rather than large additional processes or tools. In the following year, he reports 84% higher field-project realization, including more grid transformers installed, and 68% higher financial realization.
What you’ll hear
- Diagnose before you design. Gregor traces a familiar chain: the project manager gets blamed, points to the team, and the team is overloaded because everything is urgent and priority one. More training or better delivery tools do not clear that traffic jam. Understand the underlying problem first.
- Build only the next useful level of maturity. Match data, modelling and process to the decision rather than designing the finished system in advance. Gregor argues that better data cannot simply be forced: people improve it as they understand the value of the process and take part in building it.
- Bring less-visible work into view. Small initiatives, operational work and other demand still consume capacity even when they do not appear cleanly in the formal project list. Gregor and Dan use the image of bicycles filling the road: count them, understand them and bring them into a manageable portfolio view.
- Connect value, constraints and buy-in. Dan’s minimum viable model still needs all three: an explicit view of what matters, the constraints that limit what can be done and a process people trust enough to use.
- Keep leadership judgement in the process. In the Q&A, Dan argues that structured criteria should guide most choices, while legitimate exceptions remain possible when the reason is explicit and the decision-maker is accountable.
- Get to first value, then iterate. Dan argues for a short gap between the idea and the first useful result, followed by review and deliberate increases in maturity that turn the MVP into an ongoing prioritization capability.
Research in context
Gregor’s grid-operator example starts with a gap between what leadership believed was clear and what delivery teams actually experienced. A 2023 Harvard Business Review analysis of more than 500 employees across 12 organisations found that actual strategic alignment was two to three times lower than perceived alignment. Leadership’s confidence that priorities are clear can overstate how widely that clarity is actually shared.
The webinar’s bicycles image has research behind it too. A 2026 International Journal of Project Management review of 46 studies found that unofficial projects can sit outside the formal portfolio while drawing on the same resources as official work, leaving actual available capacity lower than management perceives. Much of this work is incremental improvement rather than simple waste, and the review warns that heavier formalisation can undermine less visible or less structured initiatives. The practical point is to bring hidden work into view so leadership can make informed choices about it, not assume that everything outside the formal portfolio should be stopped.
How this connects to TransparentChoice
Where TransparentChoice fits. The webinar focuses on how a PMO can start useful prioritization without building the finished system first. TransparentChoice adds a narrower decision layer when the practical problem is that worthwhile work is competing for limited capacity and the formal project list does not show everything consuming it.
The software can represent material project and non-project demand alongside priorities, capacity, timing and other constraints, then compare alternative feasible portfolios and start timing to show what can be supported and where overload remains. Hidden work has to be represented in the model rather than being discovered automatically, and leadership still decides what should continue, wait or stop.
Learn more
Join the next live webinar
If the PMO cannot stop the work itself, how does leadership own the trade-off?
A new request is easy to approve when the work already consuming capacity stays invisible. Bridging the Strategy–Execution Gap uses a practical waterline example to show how the PMO can make current commitments visible and ask leadership what stops or gives way.
How does prioritization become more than a PMO scoring process?
Prioritization, Governance, and Collaboration takes the next organisational step: connecting Finance, Strategy, business leaders, Delivery and portfolio governance around shared value, constraints, decision rights and accountability.
What does hidden work and scarce capacity look like in practice?
RNLI surfaced previously hidden work, involved engineering experts and leaders, compared credible portfolio choices and revisited the portfolio when priorities changed.
Speakers
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.