As we indicated in a previous post, the TenForce Project Portfolio Request module offers

• A standardized workflow to define, review and approve/reject new requests,
• An approach for handling project requests and possible change requests,
• A budget for each portfolio with a view of the available budget in mandays, how much is in the pipeline and how much is already fixed,
• A view of the requests under review, on hold or approved. Approved projects are defined in project workspaces, ready to be started. Approved requests are created as change requests in the relevant workspace.
• Customizable ranking algorithm to identify interesting projects.
  

Customizable ranking algorithm to identify interesting projects.

Business case	Some organizations will not allow new requests to be posted for review, as long as the business case is not available. In the default implementation we have configured no or a bad business case to have a contribution of 0 to the ranking. What is rated as a bad, average or good business case is an appreciation that goes outside the scope.
Project Type	Not all projects need a business case, e.g. projects that you are obliged to do (legal or other ‘must do’ reasons), will need to rank higher than the others. Therefore, projects of this type get a higher score to make sure they are considered first.   Two other types of projects are available: commercial projects and strategic projects. In a typical business environment, the former is given higher ranking than the latter.
Expected Commercial Value	The more profit a project will bring, the higher the ranking.
Risk	Two risk factors are considered: technical (how hard is the project to deliver) and business case (how difficult will it be to reach the objectives in the business case). The lower the risks, the higher the ranking.
Costs	Two types of costs are considered: manhour cost and other project costs. Using ranges, higher costs mean lower ranking.
External dependencies	The more parties are involved in creating the deliverables of the request, the lower the ranking. Here the ranking is simply determined by the number of parties involved.
Contribution to strategic objectives	The more projects and change requests contribute to the strategic company programs and objectives, the more a project is. Thus the higher the ranking.

• Workflow to approve requests, including who has access to new requests (can even be made dependent of the status).
• Number of custom attributes defining a new request.
• What attributes need to be provided before a request is valid.
• Specifics of the ranking algorithm.
• Department or stakeholder specific involvement and expectations per project request.

Conquering the office politics

Like with many situations in live, the one that shout the loudest get heard.

This can happen also for approving new requests. TenForce Project Portfolio Request handling removes these undesired situations on many levels:

3. Requests are ranked and the top ones cost the least, have the least risk and will bring in the most value.