Ditch the Crystal Ball: A Simple Way to Prioritize Your Team’s Work - Justin Hawkins
Jul 31, 2024
auto_awesome
Justin Hawkins, an expert in prioritization techniques for product and development, shares insights on handling a hefty backlog of over 200 ideas. He emphasizes the challenges teams face in estimating timelines and offers simple prioritization methods. Hawkins introduces the 'now,' 'next,' and 'someday' buckets for effective task management, along with the MoSCoW technique. He encourages adaptability in product marketing, helping teams focus on what truly matters amidst ongoing chaos and a constant influx of new ideas.
Prioritizing effectively requires acknowledging the unpredictability of market demands and maintaining flexible, adaptable planning strategies for development teams.
Implementing the Moscow framework allows teams to objectively categorize their backlog, helping to efficiently allocate resources based on urgency and importance.
Deep dives
Prioritizing a Backlog Efficiently
Managing a backlog of ideas, which could range from three days to three months of work, can be overwhelming, especially when new requests continually emerge. To effectively handle this challenge, it's crucial to recognize that it's often not practical to predict precisely when a particular feature will be developed. Instead of attempting to manage the backlog with unrealistic expectations, acknowledging the fluidity of priorities and maintaining flexibility is vital. By understanding that market demands and customer needs can change rapidly, teams can focus on what is essential in the short term, allowing for strategic pivots when necessary.
Effective Planning Horizons and Methodologies
Establishing a clear planning horizon can help team members focus on current priorities while keeping an eye on upcoming tasks. By categorizing work into 'now,' 'next,' and 'someday' buckets, teams can effectively manage their immediate workloads and plan for the future. One recommended methodology for prioritization is the Moscow framework, which helps sort tasks based on importance, urgency, and size. This structured approach provides an objective means of evaluating the backlog, ensuring that teams can allocate their resources and efforts effectively to achieve success in their agile processes.
Ditch the Crystal Ball: A Simple Way to Prioritize Your Team’s Work - Justin Hawkins
We have over 200 ideas in our backlog across our suite of applications. Each of those ideas represents anywhere from 3 days to 3 months of work for our product and development teams to fully define, build, and release.
All said and done, we could keep our teams busy for 5 years with only the things we already know about and there are more ideas coming in every day. So how do we possibly prioritize this giant pile of possibilities?