When Everything Is a Priority, Nothing Is a Priority
Suppose the IT assessment of the entities under a ministry or a holding company has been completed.
Now a long list of issues sits on management's desk:
One company faces serious security risks.
Another entity has worn-out infrastructure.
In one organization, users are dissatisfied with the existing systems.
A company faces a shortage of specialists.
Several entities need to renew their equipment, and a number of IT projects have also remained unfinished for months.
A logical argument can also be made for almost all of these cases:
“This issue is important and should be prioritized.”
But this is precisely where the problem lies.
If we treat all these problems as priorities, we have not actually established any priorities.
In a ministry or a large holding company, resources are not unlimited. Budget, specialist staff, time, and the capacity to deliver projects are limited. So the main issue is not only knowing what problems we have.
The more important issue is to know:
Which problem should we solve sooner, why should it be solved sooner, and what effect will solving it have on the organization?
This is where the difference between “IT assessment” and “IT governance” becomes clear.
Assessment tells us where we have a problem; governance should tell us which problem to start with, where to start, and with what priority.
Feedora: When Priorities Emerge from the Data
In Feedora, prioritization is not meant to be based merely on a company's lowest score.
The results of the technical assessment, the managers' view, end-user feedback, the risks identified, and changes in the company's condition over time are placed side by side so it becomes clear which issue truly needs more attention.
This view becomes more important at the level of a ministry or a holding company. An issue that looks small in one company may also have recurred across several other entities and, at the scale of the whole group, have become a shared risk or a shared need.
As a result, instead of facing a long list of problems, a manager can get closer to answering a few specific questions:
Which entity needs immediate attention? What is its main problem? Which risk should not be postponed? Which problems are shared across several entities? And which action or project should limited resources be spent on first?
This is where assessment goes beyond a periodic report and becomes a tool for decision-making.
Feedora is not meant only to say where we have a problem; it is meant to help us understand which problem we should solve sooner and what the next step should be.