Mastering the IT Project Pipeline

This report profiles tactics that improve project management’s ability to gain control over chaotic project backlogs, develop a standardized project request process, cost-effectively filter project requests for further development, and shape customer project demand.

In 2019, the IT Forum launched our Functional Collaborative on IT Project Management. About 55 project management leaders came together to discuss and seek advice about how to control project demand on campus and how to accurately prioritize projects.

At the root of the project prioritization challenge is a competition between campus units, each trying to get IT to dedicate resources to its requests. Because technology touches so many aspects of university operations, the project request pool is diverse and complex. But requesters see only the thin slice representing their needs. They naturally look for ways to advance their interests—minimizing project costs, submitting requests to friendly parties, exaggerating the benefits of their initiative. Effective project prioritization must tame these tendencies and assert the interests of the institution.

This executive brief—written for CIOs, project management directors, and IT governance participants—details strategies to improve project management’s ability to gain control over chaotic project backlogs, develop a standardized project request process, cost-effectively filter project requests for further development, and shape customer project demand.

5 ways to use this research:

1. Develop a user-friendly project intake process
2. Address a backlog of unprioritized projects
3. Optimize project request triage to eliminate non-viable requests
4. Work with customer units to pre-prioritize project requests
5. Improve the visibility and manageability of total institutional project demand

Practice 1: Project Portfolio Reset

Clear the ground for improved project intake processes by mapping the existing project landscape left by legacy processes. Aggressively cancel old pending requests and reassess projects that were initiated without adequate review. To address customer pushback, offer accelerated consideration for applications resubmitted through the new process.

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Practice 2: Standardized Project Intake

Without a standard, clearly defined project intake process, it is impossible to have a complete overview of the project portfolio. Use a single easy-to-complete project request form to reduce bias in the prioritization process and lessen the temptation to submit requests via non-standard back channels.

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Practice 3: Project Request Triage

One consequence of a lightweight intake process is the need to further develop requests after submission, drawing on limited PMO or IT resources. By introducing early-stage request filtering that quickly weeds out non-viable projects, IT units make better use of their project development resources and provide customers with timely feedback that helps them improve their requests.

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Practice 4: Customer Unit Demand Shaping

Through the formal assignment of relationship managers to customer units, or more informally via other roles, encourage customers to be more intentional in developing project ideas and to prioritize their own needs before submitting requests.

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Decision Guide: Selecting Project Demand Management Tactics for Your Institution

Use our decision guide worksheets to decide whether the tactics above might work for your institution and to develop implementation action plans.

IT leaders use these worksheets as a backbone for focused working sessions at staff and task force meetings. We recommend that IT leaders distribute the report to the relevant stakeholders as pre-reading to establish a common vocabulary and fact base, then spend time going through the worksheets to consider the applicability and resource requirements of the practices in this brief.

Explore the Worksheets