It's all top priority
Monday October 8, 2007
Have you ever heard that from a manager or customer? I had a manager a few years ago who referred to our team's priorities as the "priority du jour" or priority of the day (of course, the priorities actually changed about once an hour, not once a day...). Or what about when you have so much to do there is no way you can complete it all quickly or possibly even by the deadline. How do you choose what to work on? The following article discusses ways that I have found to prioritize Web projects, but I'd love to hear from you. If you have had success with other methods, please post a comment.
Comments
Like you say ‘Everything is a priority’, but I have learned to take them as they come to me and when I finish one item then I go to the next. I have had managers where everything is a priority and they want them done yesterday, but if you are the only web designer working with that company then you can take things on a first come first served basis. It’s not that I am pulling a power struggle or anything of that nature, but if everything is important then you have to make some rules and get the projects done asap.
Jennifer
There is one aspect of this discussion that you did not cover, esp important for inhousers: If you do not have the AUTHORITY to make the priorities, then you should not take the RESPONSIBILITY. This is an area where many juniors fall down. They try to priotise on competing interests and get themselves in a tizzy and/or put themselves under a lot of stress.
If they are forced to make a decision (for whatever reason), then they should clarify that decision with their boss ASAP: It is the boss’s responsibility.
s
Sinebeg: Actually, I did cover that in the article that I linked to and suggested people read.
In fact, the first thing I state to do when deciding on priorities is to ask your manager or client.
But if you refuse to make any decisions because you don’t have the authority, what do you do when you have 3 projects all due in an hour and your boss is at lunch and not answering her phone? (And before you object, I’ve had that happen to me - due dates/times change unexpectedly.)
Even if you don’t have authority to make decisions at a global level, you need to be able to prioritize the tasks you’ve been given. And if you make a decision that is well thought out, you’ll have more to back you up when you do catch the boss after her long lunch.
Your system makes sense. I triage all projects daily based on deadlines first, followed by critical path position. The reason is that most projects are actually ’sub-projects’, i.e., part of a larger campaign and delaying them risks major deadline failure ‘down the road’.
There are a number of free online project management sites I encourage my clients to use. Re-enforcing a clear plan for reaching deadlines means they take more responsibility for adding ’small projects’. Because they are aware of constraints and buy into the schedule, I charge for time away from other planned tasks PLUS their charges. The result is additional tasks are often dropped or delayed. In all cases, communicating with the client is just as important as communicating with the client’s market.
I agree with Jennifer about giving highest priority to important projects followed by high ROI projects. But sometimes if I’m overwhelmed or stressed, giving priority to a small project that can be done quickly will give me a feeling of accomplishment that helps refocus my energies for the more important projects.
Great article! I thoroughly enjoy your writing!
I enjoy your insight on the highest ROI being a factor, but like you also said, whatever management chooses as their highest priority is what I put at the top of the list.
I also like your comment about using a vague measure for the time it will take (short, medium, or long), and fitting the short projects in between the long projects in order to have some sense of progress.
I would like to know what free project management tools others (including yourself) use. Personally, I use FreeMind version 0.8.0, which is found at sourceforge (http://freemind.sourceforge.net). I put each department in their own limb of the horizontal tree image, each project within a branch, and steps to complete that project on their own twigs. I use icons to flag the top 3 or 4 priorities. When meeting with my manager, I print out the entire tree on a single page, and confirm the priorities I’ve flagged each project with.
It would be nice to have a program which gives this visual effect, but also has a way of adding the elements you recommended, such as the time it will take, the importance, and the urgency. ROI might be good to see in both the definite $ it would be saving (or making), or the man-hours it would be saving in the department the project is impacting.
Thanks again for writing such a practical article!
Although I am no longer in the corporate world (I run my own business now and report to me), when I was I had 250 ‘customers’ all of whom thought their repair job should be the first on my list.
When things got too overwhelming, I simply told them that person who had the most chocolate in their office would see me (the computer repair person) first.
Worked like a charm until someone brought it to my manager’s attention that I was ‘extorting’ payment for doing my job.
Que sera, sera. Like I said, I work for myself now. And I have all the chocolate I want!