Christmas prioritisation

Christmas Prioritisation is a method for splitting a large initiative with complex objectives into a sequence of smaller and simpler milestones based on urgency. It is named based on a mispronunciation of the name of Chris Matts, a UK-based business analyst who combined prioritisation methods with ideas from financial trading models to create Real Options.

Christmas Prioritisation is useful in situations where stakeholders represent different interests but need to come up with a single delivery plan. Instead of arguing about accepting or rejecting certain items from a plan, which can create political opposition and budgeting arguments, this method moves the discussion to timing and the value of achieving certain options before others.

Matts promoted a quick filter for prioritisation revolving around two categories: “Now” or “Not Now” (or, in situations when it’s politically difficult to reject something, “Yes” and “Yes, but later”). Christmas Prioritisation starts with that, but allows for several groups of items based on urgency.

The process starts with a metaphor of a larger initiative achieving all the objectives as a set of “Christmas gifts” that happen at a distant point in the future. The group participating in prioritisation (usually key stakeholders) lists all the “gifts” they want to receive.

In the next step, the group is asked to think about a sequence of smaller “Christmases” instead of a single big “Christmas” event at the end, and choose one present to open first, with the constraint of being able to choose only one. The process resumes choosing the next present, and so on, until they are arranged in a sequence. This effectively breaks down a big complex objective into a list of smaller goals to achieve.

Splitting large objectives using Partial Victory

A common trick to apply when creating options is to apply Partial Victory. If an initiative has two big objectives to achieve, a partial victory would be to succeed in one area but not impact the other area at all (or even fail with the other area).For example, if an initiative that is supposed to lead to reduced operational costs and increased profit, a partial victory would be to increase profit without impacting operational costs (or with a slight increase to operational costs). Another partial victory would be to decrease operational costs with no impact on profit. These two partial victories can then be “gifts” for Christmas Prioritisation - stakeholders will be asked to choose if it’s better for the company to first increase profit and then reduce costs, or the other way around.

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Alternatives to the Christmas prioritisation

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