In many companies, we face the challenge of prioritizing work. Our clients often complain in unison, “We can’t get the products out anymore.” This sentiment, by the way, spans all levels—from operations up to top management, the ability to prioritize work has been lost. There seems to be a desire to finally avoid prioritization altogether. But is that actually a good thing?
We always say prioritization is a wonderful thing, and we need to learn to embrace it as such! What’s the alternative? That we have more resources than ideas? Isn’t that actually a much bigger problem? It’s really like having a free day over the weekend. There are so many things to do—how nice is it to pick the “low-hanging fruits” (maybe even in the garden)? But how do we do that, both in the workplace and on the couch?
Possible reasons
First, let’s look at possible reasons why we struggle with prioritization. Often, it’s simply that we don’t really want to prioritize. We have a series of projects and initiatives in front of us, and our deeply democratic nature wants to make everyone happy. So, out comes the “watering can,” and everyone gets a share of the resources. Implicitly, everyone knows which projects are big or small and which project managers are higher in the pecking order. Things shift back and forth a bit, but fundamentally, everyone gets enough. “Enough” is the right word, as this approach resembles food distribution on the savanna. The kudu has been caught, and the lion distributes the meat according to rank. After all, he is responsible for the pride and has to maintain internal harmony. If not everyone gets something, rebellion threatens. Sometimes, there’s even a bit left over for the hyenas – the outsiders. 😉
The “kudu in the watering can” approach may also stem from the lack of a unified strategy within the company, making it difficult to set priorities. If the company is operating with vague strategies like “We want to be the market leader,” then allocating resources becomes naturally challenging. Actively working on this is essential. At the same time, this approach provides space for innovation, and when topics are truly owned (keyword: ownership), decentralized decisions emerge… isn’t that what every leader actually wants? Finally, not having to make the decisions themselves.
By the way, on the topic of strategy, we recommend our self-study course on Objectives and Key Results, as well as taking a look at our OKR live workshops.
First, let’s get organized…
Fortunately, in the Nerd Republic, we also have more ideas than resources. Once the initial tasks were completed, the need for prioritization quickly became apparent. So many courses need to be built, some things just have to be done, and there are still projects and company development. This resulted in a very long list of things “that should be done.” In the first step, we separated them. It would be “wrong” to mix some topics together. Is it really sensible to compare an OKR course with the integration of external freelancers? In our jargon, we call this whole process Value Streams. Behind that are large conceptual “pots” where we categorize the topics (well, actually more than that, but let’s keep it simple here).
So, we identified three streams: Course Development, Company Development, and Must Do’s. The latter is a bit more flexible than the term suggests. For example, it includes a rebranding. We will go through this step, and it will happen. We don’t say… “Well, there’s no capacity right now to launch the new website.” These are essentially topics that “always need to be addressed” and have to be worked on, but not in the sense of regulatory requirements where something has to be implemented by a specific deadline (though, of course, that could apply in your context). After organizing our work in this way, we moved on to prioritization.
WSJF – Weightest Shortest Job First
The Scaled Agile Framework uses the WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) estimation method by Don Reinertson. We’ve had good experiences with this approach and apply it as well. The idea behind it is that it only makes sense to quantify the so-called Cost of Delay (relatively speaking) and divide it by the Job Size/Work Size of the item. This helps you, as mentioned in the introduction, to identify the low-hanging fruits. So, we ask ourselves: What is currently causing the most pain and offers the greatest leverage if we manage to address it, while the smallest item is the best for us because it doesn’t block for too long? We then split the Cost of Delay, according to Reinertson, into three factors: User Value, Time Criticality, and Risk Reduction/Opportunity Enablement.
The entire equation then looks like this:
So, how does this work in practice?
- We have three large lists, divided into our mentioned Value Streams.
- In our tool, Monday.com, we’ve created a table with individual fields and automatic calculations based on the formula.
- We schedule a meeting and ensure that all participants are clear on the topics to be discussed. Any last uncertainties are addressed, and then we get started.
- We’ve chosen a 1-10 scale, but you can also use the adjusted Fibonacci sequence and remove the 40 and 100. We rank the items in relation to one another, where 10 represents the highest (highest User Value) and 1 represents the lowest.
- Someone from the team breaks the silence and throws out the first number for an item.
- This is how we discuss the items, create a shared understanding, and organize them. As the saying goes, “sometimes you win, sometimes you lose”—but we always win through dialogue. Then we go through each column, comparing items one by one.
- The facilitator needs to pay attention to certain things, for example, ensuring that User Business Value is not mixed up with Time Criticality during the discussion.
This is what our table looks like:
We aim to do this on a quarterly basis. There’s an additional loop where we review our strategy and assess how we’re progressing. If we want to adjust specific things, have new insights, or there’s concrete demand from the market, we take that into account.
Forever and ever?
Is this approach good and valid forever? Probably not. In the first round, it gave us structure. In the second round, focus, and in the third round, depth. In the fourth, it starts to crumble. The reason is that the lists simply become too long. And they grow longer than we can build speed and capacity. At that point, it no longer makes sense to prioritize 50 items per stream when we know we will only be able to implement five per quarter. So, we’ll need to make adjustments here and do a pre-selection.
There’s a general danger in this. Especially in large companies with a lot of politics, power structures, and the inevitable struggle for scarce resources, this pre-selection process can be very emotional. It leads to hard battles when it comes to prioritization. What’s behind this? Probably, a lack of understanding of what the organization can actually accomplish. Entering the race and consciously placing 50 topics when only five will make it through creates a lot of friction. If the strategy is not clear, there is also a missing filter to bring some order to the ideas.
Finally, employees are often strongly attached to projects (people become tied to the work, instead of the work being brought to the people). As a result, there’s a systemic interest in pushing “one’s” topics through. Otherwise, I might not have a job tomorrow. This is different in our case. If we’re not working on the OKR course, we can always focus on the Teal course for Reinventing Organizations. There’s enough work for everyone.
In the future, we will increasingly focus on a pre-selection process and ask ourselves: What topics do we need right now for our strategy, and what is a good idea that might come later?
Conclusion
We are big fans of prioritization because it gives us focus. We’ve had good experiences with the WSJF system from SAFe and Don Reinertsen. The system is relatively quick to implement and can also be applied in functionally diverse groups. It helps not only with prioritization but also with gaining a shared understanding of the work and why we are doing certain things. The larger the company, the further the individual stakeholders are from this understanding.
If you have any questions about the approach, feel free to reach out to us or book one of our SAFe courses. We’d be happy to share our experiences.