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How to prioritize tasks?

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Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#31

Post by catchmeifyoucan »

I have a similar methodology, and you can even use a spreadsheet to assign values across multiple factors. For example, we may use a series of 1's and 0's to represent:

Expected - Do customers expect this feature from us? (e.g. competitors) Wow Factor - Does building this make our users go wow? Need by Others - Is this a dependency for other items?

The more factors, the more divisive the points are, and plotting them makes it easy to understand and visualize what to go build next or where we might need more resources

https://www.heyraviteja.com/post/calculate-feature/

Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#32

Post by maxerickson »

dchuk wrote: post #29
travisjungroth wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this. It's interesting because it's super close to another method: Write down everything, put the most important thing at the top of a list, next important next, go till done. That's maybe the most naive method possible and essentially shouldn't count as advice for "how to prioritize". But, maybe the fact that you're going from least to most important makes it materially easier. It's functionally different…

“put the most important thing at the top of a list, next important next” you realize you’re basically saying “the trick to prioritizing is you have to prioritize” right? The idea behind all of these systems is to help people figure out what is actually important.

The link suggests replacing your intuition with how important a task is with your intuition about 3 different aspects of the task. Which has a similar problem.

The real trick to prioritization is to have enough capacity.

Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#33

Post by patmcc »

d_sem wrote: post #10
PaulRobinson wrote: post #6

Eisenhower method is all you need. Decide if something is urgent, and if it is important. Urgent and important? Do it. Urgent and not important? Delegate it. Not urgent and important? Schedule it. Not urgent and not important? Bin. Lots of things that are urgent and important? Choose 1 thing. Do it. Then do the next one. I read 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman recently. TLDR: embrace you don't have time for it all, and…

I've seen this four quadrant method frequently referenced, most recently I came across it in David Allen's book "Getting Things Done". I don't quite understand the logic behind delegating non-urgent and important work. Two points of confusion: 1) In business, how do I have the authority to delegate when responsibility is frequently defined by the role/organization or I'm at the bottom of the organization? 2) Delegati…

An urgent task needs to be done soon. An important task needs to be done by you.

1) If it's a work task and you're at the bottom of a hierarchy, everything given to you by the boss is 'important' by this definition.

2) It may be important to them - the trick is finding the right person.

Taking your kid to a scary dentist appointment is urgent and important; it can't be delayed and it can't be anyone else.

Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#34

Post by theptip »

arglebargle123 wrote: post #30
theptip wrote: post #19

Instead of maximizing “benefit - cost” I would recommend maximizing “cost/benefit”. The former will bias towards big tasks with big payoffs, but often there are small tasks with extremely good ROI, which will get lost if you just look at the magnitude of the net benefit. But, +1 to the general approach of trying to put a number on it. Remember though, your numbers are uncertain, beware the McNamara fallacy.

I'm assuming that's accidentally inverted? Maximizing cost/benefit yields the most costly task for the least benefit.

Ha yes, ROI would be benefit/cost. Thanks!

Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#35

Post by dchuk »

maxerickson wrote: post #32
dchuk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“put the most important thing at the top of a list, next important next” you realize you’re basically saying “the trick to prioritizing is you have to prioritize” right? The idea behind all of these systems is to help people figure out what is actually important.

The link suggests replacing your intuition with how important a task is with your intuition about 3 different aspects of the task. Which has a similar problem. The real trick to prioritization is to have enough capacity.

Capacity informs how well/fast you can execute through your priorities, which can sometimes mean that you should reprioritize according to your available throughput (“Capacity says we’ll have this 10th thing next year, we need it this year, let’s reprioritize). But unless you have specific time horizons for your wants/needs, capacity and priorities aren’t as related as most people think.

You should prioritize the things that will have the highest impact to your customers or your business. That could be:

- a mission critical infrastructure change - a small bug that is driving people nuts - a differentiating new feature - a whole new product that will take a long time to build

Good prioritization facts in multiple criteria. Bad (most common) prioritization is a function of loudest voices yelling.

Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#36

Post by bogdanoff_2 »

ergonaught wrote: post #15

How to Prioritize Anything: 1) Make two lists. Write everything down in the first list. The second list is empty. 2) Something came up! One item on this list cannot be done. It doesn't matter why: you know which one that is. Which one is it? Write that down in the second list and mark it off the first list. 3) Repeat until the first list is done. Congratulations, your second list is prioritized (albeit likely in reve…

This is genius! It's like getting the benefits of procrastination without actually procrastinating.

This seems to me that this would work best for deciding what to do within a fixed timeframe. How can this be adapted for things of varying time frames? Certain things don't need to be done today on any given day, but if months go by and i haven't done them, it's bad.

Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#38

Post by walterbell »

https://longform.asmartbear.com/posts/jit-backlogs/

> Sorting a “Big List” of epics doesn’t seem like the right way .. The first problem is that you’re sorting things that are incomparable .. The second problem is that the resulting decision is unsatisfying to [all] stakeholders .. The third problem is that The Big List conflates the idea of “prioritization”—what is most important—with “work-planning”—which is the order that specific work will be executed ... The solution is to prioritize items in separate, actually-comparable streams ... Don't forget to schedule rocks, then pebbles, then sand. That’s an even more primary principle for work-planning. Separate prioritization streams help identify which rocks and pebbles should be scheduled in the first place.

Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#39

Post by travisjungroth »

dchuk wrote: post #29
travisjungroth wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this. It's interesting because it's super close to another method: Write down everything, put the most important thing at the top of a list, next important next, go till done. That's maybe the most naive method possible and essentially shouldn't count as advice for "how to prioritize". But, maybe the fact that you're going from least to most important makes it materially easier. It's functionally different…

“put the most important thing at the top of a list, next important next” you realize you’re basically saying “the trick to prioritizing is you have to prioritize” right? The idea behind all of these systems is to help people figure out what is actually important.

> you realize you’re basically saying “the trick to prioritizing is you have to prioritize” right?

I'm very aware of it. The next sentence I wrote:

> That's maybe the most naive method possible and essentially shouldn't count as advice for "how to prioritize".

Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#40

Post by travisjungroth »

matthewmueller wrote: post #27
ergonaught wrote: post #15

How to Prioritize Anything: 1) Make two lists. Write everything down in the first list. The second list is empty. 2) Something came up! One item on this list cannot be done. It doesn't matter why: you know which one that is. Which one is it? Write that down in the second list and mark it off the first list. 3) Repeat until the first list is done. Congratulations, your second list is prioritized (albeit likely in reve…

I'd like to read more about this. Are there any additional resources on this prioritization method?

"Find additional resources about this prioritization method" should definitely go at the the very top of the second list.
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