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Prioritize Initiatives

Prioritize the initiatives and determine which are most critical to the IT Division's goals. 

Introduction
Activity
  1. PrioritizeInitiatives

Introduction

Once the initiatives are identified, the strategy team creates a framework for prioritizing initiatives. Prioritizing initiatives allows the HS Agency Decision Makers and the IT Division Decision Makers to focus their attention and resources on the goals essential to the IT Division.

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Activity

To prioritize initiatives, the Strategy Team performs the following activity:

1. Prioritize Initiatives

Purpose:

The purpose of this activity is to prioritize the initiatives. It is important to understand how each of the initiatives impacts the IT Division's strategic plan. In times of limited resources, prioritizing the initiatives helps the IT Division think through the difficult choices (such as allocation of personnel and funds) and allows them to focus their time and energy on the important initiatives contained in the strategic plan.

Description:

Once the initiatives are documented, the Strategy Team aligns the initiatives against the HS Agency's vision, mission, and guiding principles and the IT Division's vision, mission, goals, subgoals, guiding principles, and critical factors to determine the degree to which the initiative impacts the needs of the IT Division.  Each initiative should be examined and prioritized as high, medium, or low.

Because it is unusual for the IT Division to implement all the initiatives at the same time, the strategy team needs to prioritize both the current and future initiatives. The IT Division should plan to implement the initiatives of highest importance first and then build on the confidence and success those will bring in order to implement the medium- or low-priority initiatives.  The Strategy Team can use the Initiative Priority Matrix as a tool for this activity.

Rationale or assumptions made in prioritizing the initiatives should be captured and held within the strategy team as working notes. The rationale may need to be provided when providing insight into the prioritization scheme. 

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Last Updated: May 4, 2005