Have a prioritization session

Without a plan of attack, deciding what to work on and when can be a daunting task. By running this play, your team can focus on the most important aspects of a project and put them in the right order. Your team will also be able to identify other tasks that can be pushed aside or dropped entirely, allowing more time to work on what really matters.

We recommend getting the entire project team involved, as well as any high-level decision makers such as your director. This play will take approximately 60 to 75 minutes to run.

Before you go any further, make sure you’ve determined your project’s objectives and results. Is training necessary to complete the project? What about external stakeholders? Use the Clarify objectives and key results (OKR) play to confirm.

Before the meeting, send all participants a copy of the project’s poster or one-pager, as well as any objectives and key results - this will ensure everyone is on the same page.

Once the meeting begins, brainstorm as a group and determine every task needed to deliver on the project’s goals. Write each individual task on its own sticky note. Each task should be specific and relate only to this project. However, try not to be too specific: you should have around 50 cards or less at the end of this activity.

Next, categorize your tasks into 2 to 5 groups. Examples of groupings can be found below:

• By milestone
• By team or person responsible
• Whether or not tasks involve fixing bugs, adding to an existing feature, or creating a new feature
• Whether a task is part of maintaining the project or executing a new portion of the project

On the back of each task’s card, note how it relates to others (if applicable). Dependency relationships are especially important to note – for example, if one task depends on another.

Break out into smaller groups, assigning one of the above categories to each group. The group will then rank the tasks by the order of importance.

Pause and have groups swap categories. Review how the tasks are prioritized and adjust cards as necessary – don’t worry about keeping a record of the original order.

Try to have each group look at each category once.

Reconvene and consider where you would determine an “okay to drop” line for any of the categories and tasks. Using these criteria, go through each category and decide where the “okay to drop” line is - which tasks could be delayed or dropped entirely without having a massive effect on the success of the project? Continue until you’ve gone through all categories.

Finally, review all your categories and prioritized tasks. Ask the group how they feel about the team’s ability to deliver a quality project on time with these tasks and in this order.

If the group feels as though the project will fail for any reason, spend the final minutes brainstorming any risks to success. Consider following up with the play Conduct a premortem session to understand why the team feels they might be set to fail on this route. Address these feelings and try to come up with new or different tasks that will mitigate any failures.

• Step-by-step instructions for tracking your team’s health, and new ways of working: The Atlassian Team Playbook (Atlassian, 2019)

Materials on this website were produced and/or compiled for the purpose of providing Canadians with access to information about the programs and services offered by the Government of Canada. It is subject to the following Terms and conditions.