How many of you have been given a task list that look like this?
The person giving you the list probably does so with a big smile and says “look, we put things in priority order so you can plan!“. So, you ask, “I see a lot of P1 projects. Which are the most important that I should focus on first?”. “All of them, of course. They are all P1s!“, comes the reply…
This is not prioritization, this is grouping. A truly prioritized list answers the question:
If we could only do one thing, which one would it be?
Now, I’ll tell you that the responses I’ve gotten to that question were not always pleasant. “What do you mean we can only do one thing?!?!?! I need them all!!!“. And so it begins…
Of course this isn’t a suggestion to only do one thing at a time. However, this is the process that will fine tune your priorities, whether it is allocating your time, assigning people to a team or spending a budget. It is also the tool your team can use to make better decisions about how they spend their time.
The idea is to keep asking the one thing question until you have a list in absolute, ordinal priority order.
If we could add one more thing, what would it be?
The end result is something that looks like this:
Armed with this information, you can set about planning to ensure that project brave bartik gets done no matter what, project crazy cray is next in the chute, etc. If when problems arise, you already know which projects you can borrow from to shore up others.
If you manage a team, they now have the information they need to properly respond to incoming requests.
If you aren’t successful in getting people to play the one thing game, you’ll need to employ another tactic.
The next step in the planning process is to clearly define which of the projects in the list you are committed to delivering by drawing the line.