Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Project Management is, at it’s most basic, a series of prioritizations. Projects are comprised of smaller blocks of work called ‘tasks’, and the number of tasks in a project can number in the hundreds or even thousands, depending on the granularity of each task. To insure the orderly and successful completion of a project, all task must be evaluated and sorted by their relative importance to individual timelines and the project as a whole. How we decide to do this, can make all the difference.

Prioritization techniques can vary from business to business, or even department to department. ‘MoSCoW’, ‘RICE’, ‘Eisenhower’, and ‘Kano’ are four of the most popular techniques to prioritize task within a project. Each approaches prioritization from a particular mindset, so each serves a particular audience. But each also has a glaring error, each relies heavily on ‘trust your gut’ predictions with no mechanism to review past failures and adjust future efforts. But I want to change that.

By asking a set of simple objective question, each task can be assigned values for importance, urgency, and confidence. Once a task is compete, a sperate set of questions will guide the manager through a review process that will adjust values of similar task.

To make this happen, I will use a combination of Maslow Hierarchy of Needs, the Eisenhower Matrix, and the RICE method. I’m just getting started on this, and will post updates when there’s something worth posting.

Any comments or question are welcome.