Episode 15: Priority

by Imran Kasam & Steve Ledwith

This episode was published on 10 September 2020 and is approximately 54 minutes long. This episode made possible by Glow Your Soul and Anchor.fm.

Overview

In this episode we’re talking about priority. You’ve all heard it, When everything is a priority, nothing is. Not sure who said it, but it’s natural truism. When we talk about priority, we’re usually talking about which project, epic, or story is most important given current circumstances. You need to be able to figure out what’s most important if you have multiple competing projects, needs, tasks, or ways to apply your resources.

Given the right context, could you figure out the priority of a list of projects? Would having input in the decision and delivery process improve your ability to deliver? Would it improve your commitment to delivery? Would you feel more empowered?

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Show Notes & Selected Links

What determines “Most Important”

  • What needs the most attention in the moment?
  • Is it a trouble ticket, or a system being down?
  • Where do you spend your personal energy

What’s “Most Important” Is Influenced by your Role

  • What does the developer want?
  • What does the architect want?
  • What does each person gain from the project?

When you’re working on a project, think about the things which are important to you?

  • Security
  • Delivery
  • Resources
  • Timeline
  • Budget
  • Stakeholder Needs
  • Business Needs
  • Risk

Business Side of Priority

  • Each business unit has its own priorities and needs

How do you balance business needs and priority with engineering resources?

  • Discussion is always required
  • Rubrics can help! Learn more about rubrics?
  • Objective scoring criteria
  • Set of goals for the company?
  • Willingness to work together to figure out the best way forward

Want to know more about interviewing? Check out Episode 14 on Interviewing

Pro Tip:

“To be successful on a project you need to understand what each stakeholder expects from the project!”—Steve Ledwith

14 min: Project Goals and Priority

  • An open ended project prevents you from moving forward
  • Define what “done” means and stick to it
  • Learn more about the Definition of Done
  • If your needs change, prioritize those new needs versus your other priorities

Quick Wins & Low Hanging Fruit

  • These are things which people think are simple, and easy to do.
  • Is there truly value here? Is it easy because it lacks value?
  • Don’t get caught in the “quick wins mentality”

Interesting thoughts about Low Hanging Fruit if you’d like to read more about it.

20 min: Sellers vs Creators

How does the company culture around sales impact your priority?

  • Do the sales team sell what you already have?
  • Do the sales team sell what they think you can build?
  • Do the sales team focus on what the customer wants to buy, even if you don’t have that?
Photo by Jopwell from Pexels

What does your sales organization sell? How does that impact priority?

Trust Me, I’m an Expert

Set High Level Priorities

  • If you have a set of objectives, or guiding principles, you can make your prioritization an easier discussion.
  • Test every project against a set of objectives, if it doesn’t fit, move it out.

29 min: The Value of Specialization

  • Imran talks through a great example of specialization versus general productization
  • Being really good at a small number of things helps determine the priority of new projects
  • Does the new request fit where you specialize, it’s more of a yes/no decision

You can spread your resources across a number of projects and delivery slowly in a variety of areas. Or, you can focus on a small number of projects with fewer resources and much higher focus.

37 min: Market Changes Impact Priority

  • Imran walks though a story about changing market conditions and how they impact priority of projects
  • What happens when your competitor completely changes the landscape of the environment?

Priorities can change based on evaluation of needs.

  • Things may change which point out why you need to make a change
  • Maybe you’re keeping a service in place for another year, or 18 months, because it simplifies other work
  • The needs at the time, impact the priority of certain work

42 min: Physical Priority

  • The discussion turns to medial priority. What’s most important for a person with critical organ / system failure.
  • It’s another way to think about priority.
  • The ideas are the same but the stakes are different.
  • As you’re working on priority of your projects, think about the same sort of thing, in another field, or with a different meaning.
  • Maybe you’ll find a new way to see what’s most important for your resources.

Episode Recap

Number of topics today, all with different thoughts regarding priority.

  • Know your stakeholders
  • Know what you want
  • Understand the business culture
  • Understand the overall goals
  • How else can you look at priority to get a better feel for what’s next?

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