Making Progress When Everything is a Priority
We’ve all heard the phrase, “Nothing is priority if everything is a priority.” And while a true statement, it doesn’t help the team trying to figure out what to do next.
So, what is one to do if everything is a priority? How does one choose what to do first?
Four Ways to Pick a Priority
This is where things are more art than science. You can’t please everyone, but you do need to address something, so here are some hints to help you pick which path to follow.
Go the analytical route
If you have a way to prioritize based on metrics/volumes, pick the big hitter. Higher volume means more usage. This is where the biggest bang for the buck exists.
This option works best when you can compare metrics across all the competing priorities.
Lean on your company or product goals
Your company or product/project team has probably set some goals for the year. Lean into those to help choose which item to work on next. This may not necessarily be the biggest item on your list, but working on it will move the ball toward reaching the goals that have been set.
Start addressing it, and get it to delivery before moving on to the next focus area.
Look for low complexity
In product management, we always look for high-value, low-effort items. You can think of this as “low-hanging fruit,” but we know it is a high-priority item that has high value to someone. If it is of low effort to deliver, pick it and go. If the team has one of those in the pool, this is as a good a place to start as any.
The users of this item will get their benefits fairly quickly, so at least one of your stakeholder groups is able to operate in their respective future state.
Pick a focus at random
I don’t often recommend this approach, but if all else fails, flip a coin, play or put them on a dart board and toss a dart.
Remember: it’s all important. So, if you pick an item the team can drive to completion, you will have succeeded at making some stakeholder happy. Other stakeholders may remain unsatisfied, but showing how you can get something to completion will provide evidence that the items they most value can be addressed well, too.
Pick Something and Focus on It
My advice to teams has been to pick something, somehow, and just start. Push the rest aside for now. You don’t have the capacity to handle it all right now.
Trying to spend a little bit of time on everything only delays outcomes for everyone. It can seem tempting to sprinkle progress across areas and stakeholder groups, but this typically slows down overall progress.
Instead, pick something and communicate with your stakeholders your intentions and reasons. Make sure they are along for the journey. They probably have more priorities than they can address at a given time, too, so sharing what’s on deck and why can build both awareness and rapport. And then, when you deliver as promised, you’ll build confidence in the path and approach.
Embrace Feedback Loops
If you have been working with an agile framework of some sort, you are most likely aware of feedback loops. This is where you want to take your item of focus and have regular and frequent touchpoints with your end users and stakeholders to see if your work is on track with the expected outcomes/results. Be responsive to the stakeholder team and get to solving their problem, not just addressing the symptoms that have come up.
Rather than spend a lot of time telling you about building a solution for an early adopter versus what is needed for typical end users, I will just point you to Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore and encourage you to look into this for yourself.
Spoiler alert, your first solution is going to need tweaks as you get more adoption. Get to a good point in the solution you are developing, then turn your attention to the next thing on your priority list and come back to deal with any technical debt as needed.
Closing Thoughts
The big takeaway is that we can’t be everything to everyone, and that also goes for solving everyone’s problems now. When you have competing interests and everything is important to someone, you have to figure out a way to pick one and get going.
It is far worse to get into analysis paralysis and stand still trying to figure out which thing to pick. Just pick one and go. Someone is going to be happy and someone else is going to be disappointed. That’s the nature of working with finite resources and limited funding.
Make the decision and get moving on building the solution.