Consider Alex, a talented project manager, who is responsible for overseeing a complex pricing software project. Initially, the requirements were well defined, but as the project progressed, additional feature requests continued to pour in from the client. Without a clear prioritization framework in place, these new demands damaged the project timeline and compromised overall quality. Needless to say, project stakeholders weren’t happy. If this sounds at all familiar, we’d like to offer some tools on how to prioritize tasks well so you can keep your agile pricing project on track.
At Pricefx and CLARITY, with years of combined experience in helping our customers transform their pricing processes to realize their business goals, we know how easily projects can go awry without the right planning methodology. To help, we’ve partnered with Oleg Dimchenko, SAP Quote-to-Cash pre-sales consultant for CLARITY, to explore the importance of prioritization in a pricing project and how to achieve it.
In this article, we’ll do a deep dive into the reasons prioritization is key in pricing projects, including the risks you may run into without it, before providing you with a few tools to support more effective task prioritization.
Why Prioritization is Important in Pricing Project Management
We’d like to preface by saying that prioritizing tasks well is not just important in the context of software implementation, it’s a prerequisite for any project with a significant timeline and extensive task list.
With that being said, here are just a few benefits you can look forward to when you embrace a pricing software project framework defined by strategic prioritization.
Benefits of Prioritizing Tasks in a Project
Alignment with Business Objectives
At the most basic level, prioritization ensures that your implementation project is aligned with your key business objectives. By analyzing which tasks have the greatest impact for your business, project stakeholders can easily identify the “must-haves” in their priority list and guarantee the kind of value they’re looking to get from a pricing software implementation.
Risk Management
Prioritizing tasks helps to address potential risks and challenges at the start of the implementation process that could have otherwise slipped under the radar. Stakeholders should identify high-risk factors early on to enable project managers to have more time to react to unforeseen issues and adapt the project accordingly without damaging the delivery timeline. Taking a proactive approach to risk management by identifying risk ultimately increases the chances of a smooth implementation process.
Efficient Resource Allocation
Because different tasks call for specific areas of expertise, having a solid plan in place for resource allocation ensures the right people are adequately involved when they’re needed in the project. For example, setting prices requires pricing managers and economists, while a quote approval also requires the presence of the sales team. By defining tasks based on their requirements and dependencies, prioritization helps to optimize the resources at your disposal and ensure the project progresses efficiently.
Management of Stakeholder Expectations
Stakeholders should have a shared definition of success in any given project, outlining key deliverables, milestones, and timelines, to support an implementation with expected outcomes. This practice will result in greater confidence in the ability to deliver in the same way in future projects.
Software Scalability
Any project with growth potential requires a solid foundation. To do this, you’ll need to know which software features are most critical to your business and avoid making compromises on those functionalities. The strong foundation afforded by prioritization ensures that the most important aspects of the software are front and center in a project, in turn enhancing the tool’s scalability in the long term.
What’s at Risk Without Prioritization
At the end of the day, most issues in the project can be solved – but at the cost of a longer timeline and wasted resources.
Delayed time to value and resource wastage as a result of poor prioritization will have a ripple effect into other areas of your project, resulting in your business missing out on the full benefits it expects from the software system – and in turn being at a competitive disadvantage as competitors successfully leverage new technologies.
While prioritization isn’t the end all be all to ensure a project’s success, it’s a crucial component that shouldn’t be underestimated. Here are just a few risks to expect when your team fails to prioritize tasks effectively:
Delayed Project Completion
Without the right prioritization, critical or high-risk tasks may not receive the attention they deserve at the onset, leading to project delays and extended timelines.
Resource Wastage
A lack of prioritization may result in disproportionately assigning resources to less essential tasks, resulting in a lack of resources for items needing reactivity most. This can compromise the quality of implementation, require significant budget or timeline adjustments, and impact the project success overall.
Reduced Quality
Important features may be overlooked or not adequately addressed as a result of a lack of prioritization, leading to reduced effectiveness of the software solution; poor performance, limited usability, and negative user experience are just a few consequences.
Dissatisfaction Among Stakeholders
Misaligned expectations due to poor communication around project goals at the start can undermine buy in from internal teams and in turn damage trust from external stakeholders. At worst, this could compromise your organization’s reputation in the long term.
Project Priority Checklist for Quick Implementation and Time to Value
The importance of prioritization in a project is clear to most at a base level, however, not everyone has the right tools at their disposal to enable effective prioritization.
Using the following project priority checklist as a guide for decision making, your team can observe a seamless software implementation period and accelerated time to value.
With this framework in mind, it’s important to recognize that task prioritization is not a one-time activity. While good planning in the beginning is a vital exercise in laying down the project roadmap, you’ll need to remain flexible with your to-do list as the software requirements (and priorities by extension) evolve over time.
How Partners Can Help You Identify Your Priorities
When working with a Pricefx partner to support your software implementation, you can count on additional support in staying on track of your priorities. Here are just a few ways partners support businesses in doing this:
Project Experience
Having already worked on similar projects and use cases, partners bring valuable experience to project planning; they can share knowledge, insights on what works well or doesn’t, and help identify critical features that may otherwise be overlooked.
Background in Prioritization Frameworks
Many partners are trained in prioritization methodologies, such as the MoSCoW Prioritization Model, offering a structured approach to defining requirements according to your project goals.
System Expertise
Partners leverage years of experience working with specific systems like Pricefx or Salesforce to bring in implementation best practices and in-depth knowledge of the software’s capabilities. They can evaluate requirements from the point of view of a specific system and identify priority areas where the system’s capabilities bring the most value (or pose the most risk).
Collaboration and Stakeholder Management
Partners play a crucial role in facilitating collaboration among internal stakeholders, particularly for companies with limited experience in software projects. By asking the right questions and providing guidance on methodologies for effective communication, partners can help businesses overcome challenges in stakeholder management and ensure a smoother project execution.
With Your Priorities Lined Up, These Strategies Will Help Get Them Done on Time
Prioritization is a crucial component to both pricing software projects implementations and any projects with complex requirements – and while straightforward in theory, in practice it can be more difficult to achieve.
What’s more, the reality is that while your priorities can be in the right place over the project lifecycle, a project can still be at risk of running past the agreed timeframe. To learn more about the reasons driving project overrun and how you can ensure a timely project delivery, consider checking out our article below:
