I love how well you tell a story, Amanda.

We had something similar in DfE, Test and Trace, and Barnardo's - I got into the habit of turning them into a "project canvas" because who doesn't love a canvas (or hate a PID)?

Fascinating challenges I've seen in this space more broadly that I thought I'd share:

* some teams get paralysed by the questions asked - and spend sooooo long generating the spurious accuracy they think is needed, when often ballpark accuracy, relative comparison, or a convincing plan to fill the gap will be enough to inform a decision;

* sometimes things important enough to make it onto the list can be hard to stop once they get enough momentum, irrespective of the opportunity cost;

* great solutions often won't get implemented if you don't have a clear "path to the beach" (something Sophie Dennis used to say). A strong relationship with digital and operational teams - and connection into their prioritisation processes - really makes a difference here. They may not care about other peoples' sunk costs, after all;

* some teams have their funding and relationship to the rest of the org set up in such a way that they don't really get to decide on priorities, and are instead aggregating policy directors' priority rankings. It can be quite painful for teams that don't realise they're operating in those constraints - especially if they don't make the effort to shift to more networked governance models (or change their funding model).