How to Implement a Prioritization System
Housekeeping
ExperTech Insights continues to experiment with ways to integrate its newsletter and blogs. The approach it has landed upon is an interconnected universe with each part having a different focus. The software development and strategy construction journals cover topics in depth, and they endeavor to create a body of knowledge on application construction and planning. This bulletin addresses subjects more succinctly than the blogs do, but it still desires to build out a corpus of insight. That collection is set of Cliffs Notes, a bag of condensed treatments. However, an item can expand upon previous pieces just as the journals do. Moreover, a post can dilate on a pamphlet. A newsletter can extend the work of an article. The parts form an interconnected world where each element has a distinct focus.
Implementation
An organization’s first actions on its systemic problems should be simple. The recommended response is to assure that an institution places levels of importance on its software development work. That company should use its knowledge from other domains to guide its construction of a prioritization scheme. If no such blueprint exists in a business, then it must start from scratch. That organization needs to know where to begin its implantation. An initial rollout is outlined below.
An institution should start with three levels of priority: high, medium, and low. If it finds those ranks too course, then it can create finer layers. Three tiers should be enough to start. A company should not add more levels, until it knows that it needs them.
A business should set limits on the work in each rank. Without restrictions, every task is placed in the highest tier. That level’s purpose is to provide distinctions. No contrast can be delivered, if all jobs have the same positon. Each plateau needs a limit to administrator identifiable divisions.
The restrictions becomes tighter the higher a plain resides in a hierarchy. The highest level receives attention first so it must be extremely restricted. The lowest tier garners consideration last, so it only requires relaxed control. For example, the top rank should be limited to one item at a time. The middle position should be capped to ten. The bottom plateau does not need a restraint. Those regulations can be modified by an organization, after they are deployed. However, they should be sufficient for an institution to start monitoring its allocation of work.
A task is not stuck in its initial slot. A job can be elevated or dropped by a company, if its destination has the capacity to receive it. An item’s priority might change as it lingers. A business needs the ability to adjust its preferences.
Works with higher desires are assigned resources before lower ones are. For example, a job in the top tier must be given support, if it has not been handed any, before the tasks in the levels beneath it are. The middle rank’s items are lent backing, if they do have any, before the ones in the lowest position are. The plateaus enforce how an organization manages its activities.
The actions of any particular resource must also be regulated by an organization. That institution could restrict how many tasks it gives top priority, but it could continually stuff a particular worker with lower demand jobs. Those items look they are in progress, but they are not. The laborer assigned to them has such a big backlog that he might never get to certain activities. Their company believes it is shrinking a priority’s pool by handing as much of its tasks out as possible, but it is actually causing that lagoon to flood and its operations to backup. An organization needs to regulate assignment to its resources to prevent ballooning queues and a stoppage of flow.
Short lines and fluidity can be achieved by giving each priority a cost and each worker a capacity. When a laborer is assigned a task, his space is reduced by the price of the job’s priority. Higher preferences have larger expenses (e.g., high is 100, medium is 10, low is 1), making those tiers more pricey to assign to a person. When that individual has no more room, an institution can no longer give him work. When every worker’s volume has been filled, a company cannot hand tasks out, until workers complete enough jobs to free up space. When activity stops, a business experiences a hit. It is has incentive to consider carefully what priority it gives a task and what work it assigns to which resources. An organization keeps its queues short and its operations fluid, by giving items costs and workers a capacity.
That institution could give work a high priority to get the job assigned faster. It could then drop that operation to a lower level, freeing up capacity. A company should not allow allocated items to lower their tier. An activity can raise its tier, if the resources assigned to it have the space to allow the increase in cost. If they do not, then a business cannot elevate that task. That organization is prevented from lowering a job or raising it without capacity, to restrict easy ways people can game the system.
In this scheme, space is not freed up, until the work is done. A completed job opens a slot in its tier, and it frees capacity in the workers assigned to it. A level does not get an open space, once an institution hands out a task. If that item has all of its laborers removed, then its rank could exceed its capacity. A company could give an activity resources, allowing it to add another job to a level. Those workers could be removed, and they could be handed out to other tasks, continuing the process and bloating queues. That short of shell game should not be allowed. It can be prevented by only freeing space, when an item is done.
Curated Content and Authors
Erika Heidi discusses what high availability is and why it is important.
Adrian Bridgwater describes progression of steps a startup organization takes.
We wrote an article that describes how data and domain knowledge contribute to the development of a strategy.
We penned a column that argues that software development projects fail for the same reasons ones in other domains do.
Mike Cohn provides online courses. He also offers coaching and consulting services that focus on creating high-performance teams, using Agile and Scrum.
Final Notes
People interested in systemic software-development-issues should read Software Development Journal. Individuals engrossed by strategy should peruse Strategy Construction Journal. Both blogs are developing out a body of knowledge on their subjects. For shorter topics, subscribe to this newsletter. To get content as it is distributed, follow ExperTech Insights on Twitter.