Assessing new process
If one looks at the new perspective of priority management, the new process is a positive improvement due to several reasons:
• The process of decision taking and priority assignment became more transparent and easy to understand even to individuals or groups that were not directly involved in the project;
• Unstructured debates among executive sponsors that sometimes resulted in haphazard outcomes now got replaced by an orderly and rational process;
• The trade-offs were made explicit and the process of decision taking looked also upon the degree of impact of business in general and compliance with corporate goals as well;
• The out-of-office event helped to focus on setting the “things-to-do” thus making them priority #1 for the day (not a thing to do apart from individual’s other tasks);
• The process allowed merging some of the project that usually put them onto more favorable position for funding thus some of the projects received funding on “group” level. At the same time, they could have been rejected if considered only on specific business line level;
• The process also ensured to eliminate certain part of frustration of not receiving funding by making it clear that some of the projects just have to be delayed as they cannot be started without some others taking place first;
• The process also involved standardized documentation (template) for making official application. Thus this reduced of some applications sent back due to some information missing (as the template clearly indicated what kind of information is needed) or the application process and documentation is interpreted by each business line differently so there would be numerous versions of document that would be hard to manage or systemize.
However, some of the drawbacks are taking place as well. If to mention more specifically:
• The process is designed for funding decisions to be taken only from Volkswagen of America...