Project Economics: Selecting and Prioritizing High Value Projects

Almost all of us have worked on too many projects that have failed because of economic reasons rather than technical reasons. Just as the technical team is required to estimate the effort that will go into a project, a marketing or product management team should estimate the benefits of doing the project. Benefits can come in the form of additional sales, increased customer retention, increased operating efficiencies, and so on.

In this session we will look at return on investment (ROI) as well as traditional discounted cash flow methods such as net present value (NPV), and discounted payback period. We will also look at newer approaches such as economic value added (EVA).

The math is easy, the concepts are powerful. You will return home with practical knowledge about how to apply these straight-forward techniques to prioritizing and selecting projects.

About Mike Cohn

Mike Cohn is the founder of Mountain Goat Software, a process and project management consultancy and training firm. He is the author of User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development and Agile Estimating and Planning, as well as books on Java and C++ programming. With more than 20 years of experience, Mike has previously been a technology executive in companies of various sizes, from startup to Fortune 40. A frequent magazine contributor and conference speaker, Mike is a founding member of the AgileAlliance, and serves on its board of directors. He can be reached at mike@mountaingoatsoftware.com.

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