How to Prioritize Training Projects (+template)
There is at least one singular challenge that unites training professionals everywhere.
Whether you’re a one-person department, brand-new team, or rockstar group of training professionals with years of success – eventually everyone has to reckon with it…
There are too many training requests, and not enough resources to take them all on.
How teams choose to solve this problem ultimately affects every aspect of how they operate going forward and even their reputation with the rest of the company.
So how do we find clarity of direction among the chorus of voices requesting training?
Priority Mapping
Enter the Priority Map – the tool I use to inject a bit of objectivity into something that’s otherwise kind of a mess.
One axis is perceived Value, and the other holds perceived Effort.
Granted, having two criteria to judge is still basically a crapshoot for prioritization, so let’s go a step further with subcategories.
Effort
Estimated Development Time
Number of Deliverables
Deliverable Complexity
Content Complexity
Value
Revenue/Savings Opportunity
Audience Size
Alignment to Business Strategy
Approaching Deadline
Just by rating each subcategory 1 to 5 and averaging the totals, it’s amazing how much we learn about a project at a glance without sinking hours into development.
Low Effort-High Value: The Golden Goose
Anything that lands in this corner is a golden goose of a project.
Something that is so valuable and takes relatively so little effort to complete should be damn-near first in line for your attention.
These projects are rare, so don’t pass on one when you find it!
High Effort-High Value: Team Projects
This is a much more common place for projects to land.
High value builds often involve cross-functional teams and stakeholders with the stomach for intense production cycles.
Projects that need an entire curriculum dedicated to their content often find their way up here as well.
Projects in this zone are best tackled as a team effort so different aspects of production (or entire deliverables) can be accomplished simultaneously.
That’s not to say an individual can’t run this project solo, but there’s a lot at risk with that strategy. Expect to see long production cycles, anxious project sponsors, and one burnt-out teammate.
For that reason, small teams or one-person departments might need support with these builds. Reach out to allies across the business for a hand, or contract out the areas you need help with the most (or just like the least).
Low Effort-Low Value: The Practice Zone
Low value means less eyes and pressure on the development, and low effort translates to faster production cycles with less intimidating deliverable types.
Things are unlikely to crash and burn in this zone, but even if they do, the risk is low and stakeholder emotions don’t run very high.
In other words, it’s the perfect place to develop the fresh faces on your team.
Your newcomers (to your business or the L&D profession) will appreciate the relatively low stakes of these projects as they’re just getting started. If you want to keep them around for the long haul, show them the shallow end of the pool before pushing them into the deep end.
High Effort-Low Value: The Black Hole
Projects in this zone are cancelled before they start.
It’s not for lack of trying and has nothing to do with the team’s ability. In fact, it’s not really anyone’s fault at all. It’s just how things always seem to work out.
This level of complexity invariably increases the typical production cycle by weeks or months. Team members tend to get pulled away one by one for other priorities, until eventually only a couple poor souls remain.
The low value almost guarantees the project will have its long production cycle interrupted by a more urgent request. Stakeholder availability suffers for the same reason. The project loses momentum, stakeholders lose interest, and the whole endeavor just fades away.
Do you want to produce more as a team? Want to feel like the training you produce matters?
Stay away from these projects.
Wrapping Up
Creating the priority order for our projects isn’t just a matter of asking “can” or “when” we will do something. We need to ask ourselves if we really even “should” do it.
Getting this one thing right WILL improve the growth of your business and the output of your team.
The template I use includes all the formulas and categories to give you a recommended order. You can get your copy of it below (for free):
Get my plug-and-play template for FREE.
It’s fully customizable, so I invite you to refine the categories to whatever makes the most sense for your organization.
Want to add Bloom’s Taxonomy to your Effort calculation? Go for it.
Feel like the Revenue/Savings category is important enough to triple weight it? Sounds like a winner to me.