Engineering priority matrix5/30/2023 Lesson 3: Agree on goals and stick to them The “trade-off sliders” technique is clutch here. Then use those as your basis for evaluating and prioritizing project work. Start by laying out all the factors you could potentially optimize for (e.g., timing, budget, revenue potential, etc.) and deciding which are absolute must-haves. To keep sexy-but-ultimately-ineffective ideas from hogging the limelight, use a consistent set of criteria to weigh the value of all ideas and tasks you’re considering. The most popular ideas would get prioritized, and the rest would be left behind. Then, each person in the room would be allocated five “votes”. It was common for team leads to gather in a room and brainstorm project ideas that would accomplish their high-level goals. Similar to prioritizing based on gut-feel, we often fell victim to group-think. Get the monthly newsletter Lesson 2: Prioritize work based on consistent criteria But data-informed opinions lead to better decisions.īe the first to know about new plays. Project prioritization will always be based on opinion to some extent. What’s the scope of the problems we need to tackle? How have these problems negatively affected customers and the business so far? What’s the value in solving them? We found it’s better to do some data-gathering homework before meeting to hammer out priorities and build a portfolio of projects for the quarter (or year). (And we all know who gets made an ass of when we assume…) Not only did that lead to some pretty… umm, passionate discussions, it meant that when priorities were ultimately agreed upon, they were based on a lot of assumptions. ![]() Part of the problem is that, historically, priorities were based largely on gut-feel. Lesson 1: In data we trustĬross-team prioritization has been a struggle, even just within the team of teams that builds a single product. ✅ Tip: Find full instructions for the cross-team project prioritization matrix in the Atlassian Team Playbook – our free, no-BS guide to working better together. Read on, and try not to repeat them with your team. But along the way, we learned five big lessons about project prioritization that are worth sharing.Īnd yes: by “lessons” I do indeed mean “mistakes”. Today, we use a prioritization matrix technique developed by some of our R&D leaders. You have to account for the work initiating from within the team itself, and you have to weigh that against requests coming in from other teams who rely on you.Īs a company organized into networks of cross-functional teams – many of whom have both internal and external customers – we’ve spent our share of time collectively banging our heads against the proverbial wall whiteboard. Prioritizing project work for your team can be an exercise in hair-pulling frustration.
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