Portfolio Prioritizer
In Brief — The intake rubric and the cost-benefit model from Steps 5 and 6, made interactive. Answer six questions, enter the benefit and cost lines that produce the seventh, and the tool applies the weight profile you select and returns one composite score with a verdict tier. The point is not the number. The point is that when you decline something, you can show your work.
Before you rely on this — the weights, thresholds, and tiers below are the Waypoint defaults. They are a starting point, not a standard. Calibrate them against your own organization’s decision history before you take a verdict into a governance forum, and keep the estimates labeled as estimates. A verdict is not issued until all seven criteria are answered, and every field change is recorded in the export so the reasoning travels with the number.
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Not scored
The project
The seven criteria
Cost-benefit analysis
A multi-year model, set to five years by default and adjustable from one to ten below. Enter the benefit and cost lines; every metric is computed live, and the return and payback figures drive the Business Value & ROI criterion — absolute size is not scored, it is carried by Budget on the portfolio map on the Score tab. Hard-dollar benefits drive the score. Expected loss avoided is reported separately, because a risk-adjusted number and a committed number are not the same thing and should never be presented as if they were.
Analysis settings
Confirm with Finance. This should be your organization’s WACC or published hurdle rate. The 10% shown is a placeholder, not a recommendation.
Benefits — hard dollar (annual)
Recurring dollar value the project delivers each year. Committed and quantifiable only.
New income (often zero for risk work)
Retired contracts, storage, licenses
Manual effort reallocated
Other committed, quantifiable benefit
Total annual benefit$0
Costs
One-time build costs are treated as incurred at time zero. Recurring costs run across the horizon.
Implementation & migration
Rollout & training
Ongoing administration
SaaS, storage, support
Other recurring cost
One-time (t=0) · annual recurring$0 · $0/yr
Conditional benefit — expected loss avoided
Use this for risk-mitigation work. Probability × impact × effectiveness × (1 − haircut). This is a screening estimate, not a committed benefit. It is reported on its own line and never folded into the hard-dollar figures or scored as a benefit. The Risk Reduction criterion does require it as evidence.
Expected loss avoided (annual)—
Financial model — results
Computed over the horizon at the discount rate, with one-time cost at time zero. Metrics that cannot be computed from what you have entered show a dash rather than a zero.
Portfolio
Every scored project, ranked, with its verdict tier and where it sits on the value-versus-cost map. Your data stays in your browser — none of it is sent anywhere. Export to CSV or JSON if you want it somewhere durable.
Portfolio map: value vs. cost
Bubble size is budget, scaled against the largest project saved. Quadrant boundaries are fixed at a score of 70 and a budget of $1M, so adding a project never reclassifies the others. The ranked table below carries the same data as text.