The marketplace

To help the organization make choices and ensure that people are willing to put their own initiatives at the bottom or scrap them in favor of other initiatives, we have a simple way: focus on the common interest.

A fun, simple activity is a marketplace session with all stakeholders, sponsors, project managers, and other submitters who are fighting for a high spot on the priority list for their initiative. This session is held regularly, for example, bi-weekly or monthly, and can be done whenever there are new initiatives. In this session, the focus is on the strategic goals rather than personal goals and initiatives. From that standpoint, it is determined what yields the most value for the customer or the organization. Before the session, it must be known who the various stakeholders are and what their needs are in the form of wishes and initiatives.

During the session:

• For each initiative, ask the stakeholders to indicate the value their initiative delivers for the customer or the organization. This doesn’t need to be in hard numbers but is a description of the expected value.

• Each stakeholder gives a two minute pitch explaining what the initiative entails and the value of the initiative for the customer and the organization.

• An A4 sheet is created for each initiative with the name of the initiative, a brief summary, and the estimated value. These A4 sheets are placed on the table.

• Each stakeholder receives a bag of coins (about 20 pieces).

• Ask the stakeholders: “Suppose you are the director of your organization. Where do you place your coins?” It is essential that stakeholders don’t think from their own interest but from the whole. Each stakeholder distributes their coins over the initiatives on the table. You can optionally agree that participants are not allowed to place coins on their own initiative for an even more impartial view.

• Once everyone has finished placing their coins, you see where most of the coins are. Count the number of coins per initiative and arrange the initiatives in order. This creates a prioritized list of initiatives.

This list represents the stakeholders’ feelings about the initiatives. This is input for the prioritized backlog of initiatives.