Our group takes on a variety of projects from many sources, both internal and external to our organization. Because of the number or project requests we get, we need to prioritize our projects so that the most critical and beneficial ones get worked on first.
To help us prioritize, we came up with a few criteria that we evaluate projects on.
Critical Bug Fixes Come First
Whenever a bug comes into our tracking system, we determine its urgency based on the goals for the individual project. If a bug is deemed “Critical” by the group, it immediately gets pushed to the top of the priority list and is addressed right away. Other bugs are evaulated during our monthly planning meetings and are addressed accordingly.
Our Tools Take Priority
To keep our group as productive as possible, we need to have the needed tools in place. For this reason, tools that we need for development are placed at a higher priority than other projects.
Projects are Evaluated on Priority Matrix
The group goes through any project requests and determines their rank using the following priority matrix.
| Criteria | Low end of scale | High end of scale |
|---|---|---|
| Biggest Dollar Contributor | You don’t pay our salaries | You do pay our salaries |
| Challenging Problem Solving | “Hello World” | We need to hire an expert |
| Deadline | “Whenever you get to it” | “We need this yesterday” |
| Diversification | Same ole, same ole | New hotness |
| End User Impact | Less than 10 | More than 50,000 |
| Impact to Stake Holders | “It would be nice if…” | “We need this…bad” |
| Management Direction | “Not in your job description” | “We need you to do this” |
| Most Interesting to Group | yawn | Google would be jealous |
| New Technology | HTML | Something not invented yet |
| Potential Profitablility | $0 | $$$$$$ |
| PR Value | Nobody knows it’s happening | “Front page News” |
| Time to Complete | See you next decade | See you in 10 minutes |
Final Priority Determined by Us
The priority matrix is mainly used as a guide to make sure we address all aspects of a project. The final decision for all projects is reserved for our group.