How to Priortize a Project Portfolio Using Innovation Games

1. www.conteneo.co
How To Prioritize a Project
Portfolio Using Innovation
Games®
Luke Hohmann , Founder and CEO of
Conteneo, Inc.
© Copyright 2014 Conteneo, Inc. 1

2. www.conteneo.co
Agenda
• What do you have? A portfolio to prioritize.
• What do you want? A prioritized portfolio.
• How will you do this?This deck will show you!
• Why should you care? Because this approach
produces better results
faster. And it’s fun.
• Is it real? Case studies from Cisco, HP,
and VeriSign included.
• When can I get started? Right now. Contact us at:
info@innovationgames.com.

3. www.conteneo.co
The Essential Summary
small project
big project

other project
another project

big project
even more projects

You have more
projects to do
than you can
afford.
We prioritize your
projects by engaging
your global team in
online tournaments.
We reduce execution risk by
ensuring that you have
checked your resources
against your priorities.
1. …
2. …
3. …
4. …
And yeah, the process is seriously fun… so keep reading!

4. www.conteneo.co
What You Have: What You Want:
• A list of potential
projects to prioritize.
• Some must be done
“Run the Business”
• Some are new
• A fixed budget.
• A motivated team.
• A prioritized list of
projects.
• An understanding
of which projects
can be funded
given available
resources.
This presentation will define a process
you can use for strategic portfolio prioritization.

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Here is the High-Level Process
We’ll review each of these steps!
Organize Your Portfolio
Prioritize Your Portfolio Using
Innovation Games® Online Tournaments
Confirm Resource Requirements Using
Innovation Games® Resource Games
Execute on Your Portfolio!

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Start By Gathering Your Portfolio
Start by making a single list of all
your potential projects.
Some are “Run the Business”
(RtB) projects.
Some are “New Projects”.
Just throw everything into the
same list.
small project
big project

other project
another project

big project
even more projects


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Remove The Obvious
You probably know right away
that some projects just won’t get
done. Since we don’t want you
wasting time prioritizing projects
you know you’re not going to do,
file them away so you can
examine them again in the future.
small project
big project

other project
another project

big project
even more projects


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Split the Big List Into Two Smaller Lists
small project
big project

other project
another project

small project
big project

other project
another project

big project
even more projects

small project
big project

other project
another project

These are your existing
projects. We call these “Run
the Business” (RtB) projects.
For example, publishing a
monthly newsletter is a RtB
project.
These are potential new
projects. You can identify
these by playing Innovation
Games® like
Prune the Product Tree or
Speed Boat.

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Why Split the Big List?
• Most corporations want to guarantee that
they will allocate some money to new
projects. Splitting the list ensures that you’re
not letting all of your existing work crowd out
all of your new work.
• The people playing the online prioritization
games need the chance to think differently
about each group of projects.

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Prepare Each Project For The Games
small project
big project

other project
another project

small project
big project

other project
another project

Make sure each project has:
1. A short and snappy name.
2. A brief description.
3. An outline of the benefits.
4. An estimated cost.
Your estimated cost can be fairly precise
(e.g., based on past experience, you might
know an RtB project costs $150K).
Your estimated cost can be a rough estimate
(we recommend “shirt sizes”, like S, M, L, XL).
As long as you are consistent in how you
price your items you’ll be OK.

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How Many Projects Are On Your Lists?
• If you’re like other companies, chances are good
that each of your lists contains 20 to 80+ projects.
• And you probably can’t afford to do all of them.
• The next step is to learn how to collaboratively
prioritize a list of 12 to 20 items through the
Innovation Game® Buy a Feature. We’ll then
extend this to many games to prioritize your
entire list through a Buy a Feature Tournament!

12. www.conteneo.co
How to Get a Group of People
To Prioritize a List of Projects…
And Have Fun Doing It!
The Innovation Game® Buy a Feature

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Buy a Feature: A Collaborative Prioritization Game!
• 12-20 items described in
terms of benefits and costs
• 5 to 8 players given
limited budget
• Purchased items represent
shared priorities
• Chat logs shape resultsA Game To
Prioritize Stuff

14. www.conteneo.co
To illustrate how Buy a Feature works,
let’s imagine you make coffee makers
and you want to prioritize a list of
potential features (or projects) with
your global product planning team.
Portfolio
Team

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First, You Will Load Items Into Our System
A list of features
with prices. See any
you like?
“Shirt Sizes” help you
quickly price your
features – or you can
enter a price directly!

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Next, You’ll Invite Players To Your Game

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Players are given a limited virtual
budget to buy features.
Player bids.
Highly desired features are
purchased through collaborative
negotiation.
Players chat during the game providing
you with rich insights that shape the
projects.
Players Collaboratively Purchase Projects
G
H
F
E

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Analyze Results to Identify the
“What and Why” of Important Projects
G
H
F
E
ANALYZE
Who purchased what?
How much did they bid?
Who negotiated with
whom?
What did they say?
How did they shape the
projects?

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Play Several Games To Identify Trends
We’ve played 35
Coffee Maker
games with more
than 150 people
from around the
world. Here are the
results.
The “red” bar
means that in
some games
players spent
MORE money than
needed.
All data from the games can be
downloaded into Excel for detailed
analysis.
These results are
scaled based on
the number of
times an item was
purchased.

20. www.conteneo.co
And yes, it is FUN
V1-388 Luke Did you enjoy this experience?
V1-388 Toni Yes - fun!
V1-388 Greg Sure.
V1-388 Greg I enjoyed it.
V1-388 Vladimir thanks for the chance. B)
V1-393 Luke Did you enjoy the experience? Would you be willing to play again in the
future?
V1-393 Tom yes, and yes
V1-393 Mike Yes -- it was fun
V1-393 Sarah Definitely
V1-393 Dominic Yes, and I think VersionOne are getting great info here
V1-393 Patrick I would be happy to play again.
V1-394 Luke Team, are you now satisfied with your bids?
V1-394 Mike YES!
V1-394 Rene yup
V1-394 Andre Indeed.
V1-394 Jim I want more money!
V1-394 Andre It was hard. But lots of fun. And yes, I want more money too - do you take
credit cards?
V1-394 Mike hahaha
V1-394 Mike ok, gotta go guys.... it was fun
Chat log extracts from
three games played to
prioritize a product
backlog.

21. www.conteneo.co
We Use a Tournament
For Large Numbers of Projects
Example: Suppose you had 46 projects. We would
run a 5 game tournament. Since each game will
have 7 players, you’ve just engaged 35 people!
small project
big project

other project
another project

46 projects…
Game 1
15 Projects
Game 2
16 Projects
Game 3
Winners of
games 1 & 2
Game 5
16 Projects
Game 5
1. …
2. …
3. …
4. …

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To Increase Confidence Run Several Tournaments
Tournament-1 Winners Tournament-2 Winners Tournament-3 Winners
Business Continuity 
Easy Contract Admin 
Joint Browsing  Joint Browsing
Dedicated Support
Improve Corporate Search Improve Corporate Search
Increase BRIC Sales 
New User Interface  New User Interface
Salesforce.com Integration
Diagnostic Tools  Diagnostic Tools
Mobility Enablement  Mobility Enablement Mobility Enablement
Product Help Integration 
Single Sign On 
Training Content on Web 
Unified Pareto Process
Each Tournament
produces a unique
result based on the
employees invited to
play each game.
Patterns always
emerge!
Three Tournaments will engage
more than 100 of your global
employees!
Mobility Engagement
is the obvious winner!
This is an example inspired
by real projects for a F500
company!

23. www.conteneo.co
Tournament Results & Benefits
• What: A prioritized list projects.
• Why: The reasons behind the priorities.
• Who: Instead of asking a few leaders to
make the decision, our approach
leverages the wisdom of your
“employee crowd”.
• Engagement: Instead of a few long and boring
meetings, you play many one hour
games.
• Buy-In: Employees’ engagement creates
tremendous buy-in and fast execution.

24. www.conteneo.co
Leaders Still Lead –
Even When Results Might Be Surprising
This is how the VeriSign
employees prioritized their list.
The VeriSign leadership team felt a project
that didn’t win ANY games was important.
Solution? The VeriSign leadership team chose to pursue the
project they felt was important. To maintain buy-in, they
implemented a careful education plan that explained why this
project was ultimately chosen.

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Resource Allocation Through
Buy a Feature
Priorities Aren’t Enough.
Execution Matters.

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Do You Have the Resources?
• Even with a prioritized list, you may not have
enough resources to fund all desired projects.
• Insufficiently funded projects fail to realize
their potential and frustrate teams.
• Solution? Run ANOTHER set of Buy a Feature
games, this time using resource requirements
and resource capacity as the game currency.

27. www.conteneo.co
Start By Defining Your
Strategic Allocation Model
This is your total
budget. Allocate
by percentages.
70%30%
This is the portion of the budget that will be
allocated to existing “Run the Business”
projects. This example allocates 70% of the
budget to RtB.
This is the portion of the budget that will be
allocated to “new” projects. We find that
companies typically allocate between 20% -
50% of their budget to “new” projects.

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Allocate Budgets Based On The Model
Actual Budget Dollars
• Assume a $6M budget.
• RtB = $6M * 70% = $4.2M
• New= $6M * 30% = $1.8M
Person-Days
• 20 engineers work 220
days/year. 20 * 220 = 4400
person-days
• RtB = 4400 * 70% = 3080pd
• New= 4400 * 30% = 1320pd
Now you have a sense of your organizational
capacity and how it should be roughly allocated.

29. www.conteneo.co
Resource Allocation For New Projects
1. Develop a realistic cost (not shirt sizes):
New Project A 370 pd -- or -- $222,000
New Project B 560 pd -- or -- $336,000
2. Put the projects into a Buy a Feature game.
3. Give each player their portion of the capacity.
Total “new project” capacity is $1.8M.
If you have 8 players, each gets $225K.
4. Play the game. Analyze the results.
Which projects are fully funded?
Which are partially funded? Can it be simplified?
Should you fight for more resources?
Should you take on fewer projects but execute them better?

30. www.conteneo.co
Which Currency is Best?
• You can use any currency for the resource
allocation game: person-hours, story-points,
estimated project costs, etc.
• The requirements are:
1. The projects must be reflective of actual cost.
2. The resources given to players must be reflective of
organizational capacity.
Don’t play a game claiming you have a $45M project
budget when you really only have $30M!

31. www.conteneo.co
34Projects
Game 1
17 Projects
Game 2
17 Projects
Game 3
Winners of
games 1 & 2
Phase 1:
Innovation Games® Tournament Establishes Priorities
Phase 2:
Confirm Resource Allocations
Putting Everything Together In 1 Slide
• Each online game has 6 to 8 players and
takes about one hour.
• Winning projects are “promoted” into
the next round.
• Results? The prioritized projects AND
the reasons behind the priorities!
1. …
2. …
3. …
4. …
One final game is
played with the top
items to confirm
resource allocations.
1. …
2. …
3. …
4. …
• Now you have a
prioritized list – AND
the confidence that you
have the resources to
get things done!

32. www.conteneo.co
The Essential Summary
small project
big project

other project
another project

big project
even more projects

You have more
projects to do
than you can
afford.
We prioritize your
projects by engaging
your global team in
online tournaments.
We reduce execution risk by
ensuring that you have
checked your resources
against your priorities.
1. …
2. …
3. …
4. …
And yeah, the process is seriously fun…

33. www.conteneo.co
Case Studies

34. www.conteneo.co
Case Study:
Cisco Collaboration Business Technologies (CBT)
Problem The Cisco CBT team wanted to prioritize >50 tactical and
strategic projects for fiscal year budgeting.
Context Mix of 50+ RtB and new projects, globally distributed team.
Engagement
Profile
CBT project managers prepared the portfolio for the games.
TIGC structured the process into multiple tournaments
involving everyone in the global CBT organization.
Results • Distinct patterns of projects emerged allowing some
projects to be merged and others to be sensibly delayed.
• The resource allocation games helped structure healthy
conversations about which projects could be simplified.
• Some games were “managers only” which allowed Cisco
to compare/contrast managers and individual contributors.
• Participants considered the process fun.

35. www.conteneo.co
Case Study:
HP.com FutureWorks Team
Problem The HP.com wanted to tap into the wisdom and creativity of a
globally distributed team.
Context No initial projects, highly motivated team.
Engagement
Profile
TIGC organized a set of online visual collaboration games to
spur innovative thinking. Employees then contributed ideas to
a central list. The list was lightly shaped into a global
tournament facilitated by TIGC.
Results • Players spent a considerable amount of time further
shaping and clarifying projects.
• The process included all members of the global team as
“first class” participants.
• Participants considered the process fun.

36. www.conteneo.co
Case Study:
VeriSign Global Customer Support
Problem The VeriSign leadership needed to quickly identify the high-
priority, most globally supported projects.
Context 46 projects, 200 person globally distributed team.
Engagement
Profile
VeriSign project managers prepared the portfolio for the
games. TIGC structured the process into three tournaments
involving ~60% of the 200 person global customer care
organization and facilitated the games.
Results • Very clear separation of the “winning” projects – the
original list of 46 was prioritized to the top 9 projects.
• High degrees of collaboration – even when collaboration
was not required to purchase a project!
• Participant chat logs provided detailed explanations
behind the bidding – the meaning behind the choice.
• Participants considered the process fun.

37. www.conteneo.co
Want To Learn More?
• Visit us at: www.conteneo.co.
• Contact us at info@conteneo.co.
• Call us at (408) 529-0319.
• Share this deck.

38. www.conteneo.co
Our Core Team
© Copyright 2014 Conteneo, Inc. 38
• Luke Hohmann, CEO & Founder
• CEO & Founder, Enthiosys
• VP Engineering, Aurigin Systems
• 1982 US National Junior Pairs
Figure Skating Champion
• Laura Richardson, VP Sales
• Managing Partner, Uptime
• Dir. Business Dev., E-Color
• Little League Ump & Tough
Mudder Competitor
• Dan O’Leary, CTO
• VP Engineering, Callidus Software
• Staff Engineer, Sun Microsystems
• Fender Stratocaster Devotee
• Tami Carter, VP Marketing
• GM Tech Web/SD Events
• Managing Editor, UBM
• Poet, Lifeguard & Coal Miner’s
Daughter
• Sue Cook, VP Prof. Services
• Owner, Spearfish Innovation
• VP Global Operations, HP
• Co-Founder Mont Blanc Ladies
Literary Guild and Trekking Society
Advisors & Investors:
• Verne Harnish, Founder & CEO, Gazelles
• Paul Gemeraad, President of Intellectual Assets, Inc.
• Chris Matts, Financial Systems Consultant
• Harry Max, Vice President of Experience Design for Rackspace

39. www.conteneo.co
The Book That Started It All
© Copyright 2014 Conteneo, Inc. 39
Collaborative Play
Is the Better Way

40. www.conteneo.co © Copyright 2014 Conteneo, Inc. 40
Luke Hohmann
Founder & CEO, Conteneo, Inc.
480 San Antonio Road, Suite 202
Mountain View, CA 94040
mobile: (408) 529-0319
luke.hohmann@conteneo.co