We’re always prioritising something in life, often without even thinking too much about it.
When we do apply a bit of conscious consideration we’ll see different methods; mine involve an eclectic combination of memory, verbal reminders and scribbled sticky notes – all secondary to the urgent and obvious in front of me.
In a professional capacity, what methods are used in our product and service development efforts?
You may know the Eisenhower Matrix, a quadrant diagram that helps filter for importance versus urgency – but it doesn’t help much with the subjectivity behind the decision.
It prompts us to consider anything with immediate consequences as urgent. Partly helpful, but then again everything has consequences.
Business value
In my line of work, the term ‘business value’ is used a lot but it points to several more choices.
Does that mean:
- Revenue generating value?
- Customer value? (not necessarily the same thing at that moment)
- Internal business value, such as activity that increases employee engagement?
- Sequential value – work that enables the path for something else rather than its own direct contribution?
- Corporate politick value? Like it not it happens – and can be necessary to maintain stability in a bigger organisation
Then there’s the value of damage mitigation, compliance value, environmental and social value.
Many different considerations when you start unpacking it.
By timeline?
Sometimes prioritisation is done by due date. Start work first on the thing due soonest.
It’s clear if competing tasks are broadly similar, but that’s uncommon so we also need to consider the lead time.
If the project due at the later date is likely to take longer or carries risk, then maybe it needs starting first to eliminate those risks.
Prioritising by timeline or due date can also quickly cram everyone’s schedule with planned work, preventing quick responses to the unexpected. If something new comes up, all that planned work has to shift, which can be problematic.
The good, the bad, the unsettling
Some other prioritisation criteria you might see are:
- FIFO. First in first out, like a coffee queue. This the fairest and actually the quickest overall if items can be treated equally. Queue jumping (or ‘expediting’) benefits the individual but on average increases the wait time for everyone else.
- Importance: For when you need to attain or avoid the biggest consequences
- Urgency: To attain or avoid the soonest consequences (either good or bad)
- Riskiest First: When the desire for certainty is high but the chances are low – get the unknowns behind you
- Easiest: A good choice when motivation needs a boost or there’s a drive for quick wins to create momentum
- The HiPPO: When the highest paid person’s opinion is the one that carries
- JFDi: Just … do it. A method where high office holders get to call the shots, be that through wisdom, intuition, ego or fabricated emergency
- Wind direction: undiscernible choices that, like moving air, are adept at evading scrutiny
- Burning Ship: when the situation is so obvious that there is no other choice to make
- Strategic Alignment: for when there is a strong or essential portfolio fit, even if the item on its own is not that strong a contender
- Tactical Response: a temporary or diversionary path to achieving a known goal
Some of these sit more comfortably with me than others (can you tell?). We can all have our view on what’s appropriate, and that’s okay. But now I’ve named them, do you recognise any at work in your organisation?
Guidance
Some tools which can provide a guiding structure are:
- MoSCoW prioritisation. This method is an old stalwart: it ranks features into Must, Should, Could, Won’t categories, but it’s largely dead now through decades of abuse and everything being ranked as ‘Must’
- RICE a relatively new technique, devised at Intercom circa 2020. It’s a simple equation using reach, impact, confidence and effort values, although its subjective input makes it prone to skewing unless accurate, validated data is available
- Cost of Delay shows an estimate of revenue that will be permanently lost by postponing work on a given feature. It guises us to compare options and choose the least worst.
There are more, such as Opportunity Tree, Balanced Scorecard, OKR Filtering and the Kano model.
It’s impossible to guide which one will be right for your context because the answer really is “it depends”.
The intention here is to increase awareness of both the many factors to consider, and some of the biases that can creep in to prioritisation.
There’s no single right way for your organisation, your product or even this moment in time because context is always changing.
Whatever method you choose, my advice is to:
- Be mindful of the criteria
- Be transparent about it
- Be open to input
This will go a long way to increase trust and buy in from those who need to work with the prioritisation decision, even if it may not have been their own choice – and that’s always something worth prioritising.
About Martin Lambert
Martin is a Kendal based agile coach – a consulting partner who helps solve ways of working challenges through the application of a wide range of business agility practices.
He partners with teams and leaders as needed to provide mentoring, training, advice and hands-on embedded team working; tailoring appropriate practices to increase delivery effectiveness in your unique context.
All ‘knowledge work’ – anywhere people get together to work on something on complex, uncertain or emergent is in scope.
