Question

The Custom Bike Company has set up a weighted scoring matrix for evaluation of potential projects. Below are five projects under consideration.

Criteria	Strong sponsor	Supports business strategy	Urgency	10% of sales from new products	Competition	Fill market gap
Weight	2	4	2	5	1	2
Project 1	6	8	9	5	4	0
Project 2	9	8	4	2	7	10
Project 3	3	2	3	9	4	8
Project 4	9	6	6	1	4	0
Project 5	6	0	7	4	1	0

Using the scoring matrix above, what score would you give to each project?

Which project would you choose first?

If the weight for “Strong Sponsor” is changed from 2 to 5, what score would you give to each project?

Now, which project would you choose first?

Why is it important that the weights mirror critical strategic factors?

Answer 1

We calculate weighted score of each project as follows:

The above calculation in terms of formula is shown below:

As seen from above table, the weighted score for Project 2 is highest. Hence, this project i.e. Project 2 will be chosen first.

Now changing weight for “Strong Sponsor” from 2 to 5, we get revised table as:

Still as seen from above table, project 2 has highest score. Hence, this project i.e. Project 2 will be chosen first again.

Weights are assigned to organizational external or internal factors based on importance of those factors in managing organization's business. Higher the criticality, higher is the weight assigned to the factor. As seen from above table, when weight of a factor changes, there are change in priority of selection of project. Hence, critical strategic factors should be assigned more weights compared to non-critical ones. Thus, it is important that the weights mirror critical strategic factors.