{"id":2256,"date":"2009-05-18T09:00:37","date_gmt":"2009-05-18T16:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=2256"},"modified":"2019-08-07T14:31:31","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T21:31:31","slug":"the-priority-battles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=2256","title":{"rendered":"The Priority Battles"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Have you ever worked for someone who said\u00a0ALL requirements are high priority ? Yeah ! We all have. Customers often are insistent upon the delivery of a certain feature set by a certain timeline that\u00a0may seem\u00a0impossible to meet. If everything is high priority, nothing is !<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Project teams often\u00a0bear of the brunt of\u00a0this\u00a0indecisiveness. Impossible targets, lack of clarity and an overcommitted\u00a0team leaves team members\u00a0disoriented and frustrated. This is an all too common problem that appears to have very few solutions.<\/p>\n

Yes, every project should start\u00a0with a set of well-defined requirements and use-cases. This, unfortunately, is a misunderstood concept. What does ‘well-defined’ mean ?\u00a0Besides the use cases, there\u00a0are some\u00a0obvious parameters that are ignored.\u00a0If these\u00a0parameters\u00a0are missing, prioritization is almost always\u00a0incorrect or missing. So, I believe every requirement must come with the following parameter definitions (at a minimum) –<\/p>\n

1) Requestor Priority – P1 (immediate), P2 (during next release), P3 (at some point in time). Note – definitions are rough and change based on the nature of the organization, product and team structure.<\/p>\n

2) Requirement Justification – Why is this requirement being requested now and for this particular customer base ?<\/p>\n

3) Business\u00a0Drivers (customer \/ cost \/ product benefits) – Include $ values where possible.<\/p>\n

4) Suggested\u00a0Functional\u00a0Solution\u00a0– Not to be confused with design !\u00a0What is the suggested functional approach \/ interaction \/ workflow between various product components ?<\/p>\n

5) Alternatives Investigated – What functional approaches \/ workflows have already been investigated and why they have been rejected \/ deferred ?<\/p>\n

6) Functional Dependencies – What are the\u00a0product impacts and dependencies that will keep the\u00a0feature set\u00a0from being\u00a0complete<\/strong><\/em> for\u00a0delivery to the customer ?<\/p>\n

It’s interesting to note that often times the customer has not done this kind of analysis themselves. A simple spreadsheet showing these parameter values for all requirements goes a long way in priority negotiations with the customer.<\/p>\n

Projects with incorrect requirements prioritization are doomed to failure from the start.\u00a0 I’d love to hear more thoughts on this !<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever worked for someone who said\u00a0ALL requirements are high priority ? Yeah ! We all have. Customers often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1486,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[195,322,42,825,50],"class_list":["post-2256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goals","category-miscellaneous","tag-accountability","tag-managing-stakeholders","tag-priorities","tag-reddit","tag-requirements"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1486"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14234,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256\/revisions\/14234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}