Scoring model is yet another method of project selection. In this method, you create a committee that lists the relevant criteria to select a project. The committee weighs the list according to the importance and priorities of each project under consideration. The committee then adds the weighted values and selects a project with highest score.
One of the most common techniques used to select a project is the individual judgment. Such judgments are mostly a result of a guess work and might turn out to be biased in favor or against a project. As a result, the project can result in a failure if it gets biased favor. Similarly, you might drop a really great project if it is unfavorably biased.
To avoid such a situation, you can create a scoring model that can help you to make an appropriate decision to select a project based on the merits and priorities of the project and organization.
Principles
When creating a scoring model for selecting a project, you must consider the following principles of a scoring model:
- Try to limit scoring criteria into approximately three categories of requirements. You can select any of the categories, such as benefits, cost, size, impact, risk, technical feasibility, margin, or any other category that you deem fit to score the project requirements.
- Scoring criteria should comprise of ranges. When deciding on the scoring criteria, you can select any of the following types of ranges:
- Numeric or Cardinal Priority range: In this type of range, you assign numeric values for scoring. Following are sample values with respective description to understand the values:
- 0 – The requirement is not applicable to the project and is later removed from the list.
- 1 – The requirement has a low priority.
- 3 – The requirement has a medium priority and must be met.
- 5 – The requirement has the highest priority and is essential for the project.
- Numeric or Cardinal Priority range: In this type of range, you assign numeric values for scoring. Following are sample values with respective description to understand the values:
Depending on the number of choices, you can also consider the 0 – 10 range as a scoring criteria.
- Descriptive or Ordinal Priority range: In this type, you provide a descriptive priority, which you convert to an appropriate numeric value for further calculations. This criteria is more useful in the sense that for the numeric priority type, you must remind the team that 0 is the least favorable value while 5 is the most favorable value to make sure that there is no misinterpretation across the team. However, in this priority type, you use self explanatory values to score. Following are sample values with respective description to understand the values:
- Not Applicable (0): The requirement does not apply for the project. The requirement is later removed from the list.
- Nice to Have (1): The requirement is at a low priority. If included in the project, it is considered as an add-on requirement.
- Important (3): The requirement is important for the project and must be addressed in the product.
- Essential (5): The requirement is a must for the project and must be addressed in the product.
- You must design scoring to address the business requirements of the organization.
- You must test the scoring model with existing projects to make sure that it produces accurate results.
- You must run the scoring model through cross functional teams capable of making decision to make sure you get unbiased results.
Calculation
After you have taken responses for each requirement, you calculate the score of individual requirement by multiplying the number of responses with the priority. This is the weighted score for the requirement. Now that you have the weighted average for the projects, you can select the one that has the highest score.
