How to Prioritize Projects: A Complete Guide Using Gartner’s Run, Grow, Transform (RGT) Model

Introduction: Why Project Prioritization Matters More Than Ever

Every organization today faces the same reality: there are always more projects to pursue than there are resources to execute them. Ideas flood in from every direction—marketing campaigns, IT upgrades, compliance mandates, digital transformations, and innovation pilots. Each one may seem valuable, but when pursued all at once, they overwhelm budgets, talent, and time.

The result? Teams stretched too thin, projects delayed or abandoned, and strategies that never quite reach execution.

This is why project prioritization is not just a best practice—it is a strategic necessity. It provides the discipline to sort through competing demands, decide what matters most, and align resources accordingly. Done right, prioritization ensures that every approved project contributes meaningfully to long-term goals while still meeting short-term needs.

At OP Consulting Group LLC, we’ve helped organizations streamline the project portfolio management process end to end—from structured intake to prioritization, governance, and performance monitoring. By embedding discipline and transparency into decision-making, organizations move from reactive chaos to focused, strategic execution.

And one of the most powerful frameworks to guide this process is Gartner’s Run, Grow, Transform (RGT) model that helps organizations on how to prioritize projects.

Why Organizations Struggle With Prioritization

Despite the obvious need, many organizations still struggle to prioritize effectively.

Some of the most common challenges include:

• Too many priorities: When everything is labeled “critical,” nothing truly is.

• Political influence: Projects are greenlit based on executive pressure rather than objective value.

• Lack of intake process: Requests arrive informally, clogging the pipeline with unclear or duplicative initiatives.

• Short-term bias: Leaders favor quick wins at the expense of longer-term transformation.

• No monitoring: Once projects are approved, few mechanisms exist to track whether they deliver promised outcomes.

These challenges undermine strategy, erode trust, and create wasted effort.

At OP Consulting Group, our work focuses on addressing these challenges by creating clear, repeatable processes that allow organizations to prioritize with confidence and adapt with agility.

Gartner’s Run, Grow, Transform - RGT Model Explained

The RGT model is a simple but powerful way to view project portfolios. It divides initiatives into three categories:

• Run: Projects that sustain and stabilize current operations. These initiatives ensure compliance, maintain critical systems, and reduce risk. They are the backbone that keeps the organization functioning.

• Grow: Projects that enhance, expand, or optimize. They improve efficiency, strengthen customer experiences, or extend successful products and services into new markets.

• Transform: Projects that reinvent the business for the future. They explore new technologies, create disruptive models, or fundamentally change how the organization competes.

The model forces leadership to consider: Are we allocating enough to stability (Run), competitiveness (Grow), and innovation (Transform)?

Without this balance, organizations risk over-investing in maintenance while starving growth—or overcommitting to transformation without a secure operational base.

OP Consulting Group uses the RGT model as a portfolio-level balance check, helping leadership teams visualize where they are over- or under-investing.

Balancing Run, Grow, and Transform

Balance does not mean equal distribution across Run, Grow, and Transform. Instead, it means the right mix for the organization’s strategy, maturity, and industry.

• Financial services firms may lean heavily on Run due to compliance.

• High-growth technology firms often focus on Grow and Transform.

• Public sector agencies frequently over-invest in Run, requiring deliberate shifts to Grow and Transform.

The key is deliberate allocation. Too often, portfolios drift toward operational overload, with 80–90% of resources trapped in Run. The RGT model ensures intentional design, not accidental imbalance.

At OP Consulting Group, we help organizations analyze their current allocation, define the desired mix, and implement pathways to rebalance resources so that innovation can flourish without jeopardizing stability.

The Project Portfolio Management Process End to End and How To Prioritize Projects

Prioritization is not a single spreadsheet exercise—it is a repeatable, end-to-end process that spans the entire lifecycle of project portfolio management.

1. Project IntakeProject intake creates discipline by requiring every request to be captured in a consistent format. This ensures that all projects present a business case, estimated benefits, and alignment to strategy before being considered.

2. Evaluation CriteriaOnce captured, projects must be evaluated against consistent, transparent criteria. Common factors include strategic alignment, expected ROI, compliance needs, resource requirements, and impact on stakeholders.

3. Prioritization FrameworksFrameworks such as weighted scoring, MoSCoW ranking, and value vs. effort matrices provide structure for comparison. The RGT model overlays these frameworks to keep portfolios balanced.

4. Governance and ApprovalCross-functional governance boards bring transparency to decision-making. Leaders review scores, discuss trade-offs, and approve projects collectively, reducing bias and politics.

5. Monitoring and AdjustingPrioritization does not end once projects begin. Dashboards and KPIs track delivery, allowing leadership to adjust portfolios dynamically as conditions change.

OP Consulting Group has helped clients implement each of these stages, building sustainable portfolio management systems that reduce politics, improve alignment, and deliver measurable results.

Common Mistakes in Prioritization

Even with good intentions, organizations often make predictable mistakes:

• Prioritizing based on urgency instead of value.

• Approving more projects than resources allow.

• Using inconsistent or unclear evaluation criteria.

• Failing to communicate why projects were approved, delayed, or cut.

• Ignoring monitoring, leaving projects unchecked after launch.

These pitfalls undermine both strategy and trust. By creating structured intake, transparent evaluation, strong governance, and performance monitoring, OP Consulting Group helps organizations avoid these traps and embed discipline into decision-making.

Industry Applications of Project Prioritization

While the principles are universal, each sector faces unique challenges:

• IT and Technology: balancing system maintenance with digital innovation.

• Healthcare: ensuring compliance while improving patient care and adopting new technologies.

• Finance: managing regulatory obligations alongside digital-first customer experiences.

• Public Sector: prioritizing with extreme transparency and limited budgets.

• Higher Education: aligning academic, administrative, and student-focused initiatives.

• Manufacturing: modernizing legacy systems while investing in Industry 4.0 technologies.

OP Consulting Group tailors portfolio management approaches to each industry’s context, helping leadership teams achieve the right balance of Run, Grow, and Transform.

The Future of Project Prioritization

As business environments evolve, prioritization is becoming more dynamic and technology-driven:

• AI-enhanced scoring to predict project success and ROI.

• Continuous reprioritization in agile portfolio governance.

• Integrated digital dashboards for real-time transparency.

• Scenario planning tools that model the impact of shifting resources.

Organizations that embrace these trends will have the agility to pivot quickly while staying aligned to strategy. OP Consulting Group is actively helping clients adopt modern tools and methods to future-proof their project portfolio management.

Industry-Leading Tools to Streamline Project Portfolio Management

Frameworks are critical, but without the right technology, portfolio management remains manual and limited. Modern tools enable organizations to scale intake, automate scoring, track capacity, and provide real-time insights.

Some of the leading project portfolio management (PPM) tools include:

• Smartsheet: Combines spreadsheet familiarity with dashboards, workflows, and reporting.

• Microsoft Project Online & Project for the Web: Deeply integrated with Office 365 and Power BI, strong for enterprise governance.

• Planview: A leader in enterprise PPM, with robust portfolio analysis and strategy alignment features.

• Clarity PPM (Broadcom): Well-suited for organizations needing detailed governance and financial tracking.

• Monday.com Work OS: A modern, flexible tool strong in agile and hybrid project environments.

• Asana & Jira (Portfolio add-ons): Popular among technology teams, these extend agile task management to portfolio-level prioritization.

• Wrike: Strong collaboration features with portfolio views for mid-sized organizations.

• ServiceNow PPM: Ideal for IT-heavy organizations, integrating project portfolio management with IT service management.

At OP Consulting Group, we help clients evaluate, configure, and implement the right PPM tools for their needs, ensuring that technology aligns with process and strategy. Tools alone do not solve prioritization, but when paired with strong governance and frameworks, they create powerful ecosystems that deliver transparency and agility.

Conclusion: Prioritization as a Strategic Capability

Project prioritization is the backbone of execution. Without it, organizations spread themselves thin, chasing too many projects with too few resources. With it, they align strategy to execution, protect resources, and deliberately balance stability, growth, and innovation.

Gartner’s Run, Grow, Transform (RGT) model provides a simple but powerful lens to guide these decisions.

At OP Consulting Group LLC, we specialize in helping organizations streamline the project portfolio management process end to end. From structured intake to prioritization frameworks, governance, monitoring, and tool adoption, we create systems that transform prioritization from an ad hoc event into a sustainable discipline.

Organizations that adopt this approach don’t just survive in competitive markets. They thrive—running operations reliably, growing strategically, and transforming for the future.