Brainmoda | Staffan Nöteberg’s blog

Francesco Cirillo, the inventor of The Pomodoro Technique, writes: “At the beginning of each day, choose the tasks you want to tackle from the Activity Inventory Sheet, prioritize them, and write them down in the To Do Today Sheet”. What considerations prioritizing of the activities is based upon, is up to the practitioner.

Stakeholders are the most important animal in the art of prioritizing activities. Who’s the stakeholder? What would make her happy? How can I fetch her opinion? End users are stakeholders, as well as the paying customer and the in-house product owner. And I can’t deny that I’m a stakeholder myself. I prefer activities which are challenging; that grow my mental capability. My pairing pal, my team, my project and my company are other stakeholders. And they don’t always share the preferred path to abundance. Will all these stakeholders – and some more not mentioned – put me between a rock and a hard place?

Every morning I pull activities from my Activity Inventory Sheet. The inventory must be short, not more than a week of work load. Stakeholders, including myself, can reorganize and change not yet pulled activities at any time. The pulling of activities, which I estimate to one day of work load, keeps me in sustainable pace.

MoSCoW is NOT prioritizing

Prioritizing activities is not the same as categorizing activities in prioritized groups. Prioritizing activities means that I have one single most important activity, and one single second most important activity, and one third most etc.

An example of categorizing activities in prioritized groups is the MoSCoW methodology, described by Jennifer Stapleton in her book DSDM, the method in practice: “MoSCoW is an acronym for the prioritisation that the requirements are assigned. The ‘o’s in MoSCoW are just there for fun. The rest of the word stands for: Must have, Should have, Could have, Want to have but will not have this time round”.

Personally I don’t like MoSCoW or other categorizing strategies. If a bunch of activities are in the must-bag, how can I know which one that is most important? And when I have done all in the must-bag, should the could-bag items be moved to the must-bag, or what? A straight prioritized list is much more crisp and clear.

Choosing Activities and ROI

Return of investment (ROI) is the ratio of money earned relative to the money invested. This measurement can only be known afterwards with twenty-twenty hindsight. In order to prioritize I need to second-guess the numbers. Since I don’t actually see the money I also have to translate money into something else.

Invested money could be translated into expected number of Pomodori needed to complete this activity. It could also be translated into how complex I think this activity is or how much knowledge I have about this problem. I’m aware of that these measurements are not interchangeable and in reality I weigh and mix different measurement methods.

Prioritizing Strategies

Below is a list of prioritizing strategies that I, in a pragmatic way, have to combine:

• Most-Valuableish – If the stakeholder only got one thing from me, this one would be the most valuable.
• Make-ends-meetish – Some activities are the final piece of a big puzzle. If I complete this activity a whole feature is really done, and not only 90% done. The customer can start collecting the cash.
• Smallish – Activities that can be completed in less than a Pomodoro can be summed up and done immediately. This will get them out of sight and also give value sooner.
• Just-In-Timeish – Kiichiro Toyoda´s lean principle reduces waste by producing exactly the quantity that is needed. I choose the activity with the closest due date and that is most asked for today.
• Pregnancyish – I need to do some initial work effort just to kick off the fermentation. Then I have to wait for a predictable amount of calendar time before I can convert the dough into donuts. So I better start the initial work effort soon.
• Empty-Walletish – In some sense this activity is closest to go for free. I won’t disturb any other person, I don’t need to introduce any new tools, and I won’t trouble any existing production code.
• As-Easy-As-Pieish – This activity is located in the hood where I grew up. I know everyone and everything related to it and all its history. These kinds of activities are good candidates for navigating a pairing driver, to share my knowledge with the team.
• Digging-Deeperish – To minimize the number of things in process, I will consider starting brand new activities as maybe harmful. Instead I prefer working on already started ones.

Prioritizing Strategy Anti Patterns

Then there are many, many anti pattern prioritizing strategies. Most of them are smells of dark hidden agendas:

• Virginish – The activity that contains most new, rare and seldom-heard-of technology is the most exciting one, especially if this particular open source library can add a CV ornament.
• Avoid-monster-In-The-Closetish – It’s impossible to start with something that isn’t investigated in detail – from seed to harvest. This is actually a denial of the difference between development and manufacturing.
• No-Pig-In-A-Pokeish – The activity with most approximate How, When and Why is the one to start with. The rationale is that to delay this activity could prove later that I’m building waste right now. Under evil circumstances, eliminating risks is an anti-pattern that drives me into up-front-guessing instead of preferred evolutionary thinking.
• Stackish – Last in will go first out to the workbench. To immediately follow-up every single event that expects me to do something will make me stand without any completed result in the end of the day.
• The-Early-Bird-Catches-The-Wormish – First in goes first out is the same as never re-prioritizing. Always work on the eldest activity is over fair, and it will definitively not maximize the gained value to the customer.
• Round-Robinish – To do a little here and do a little there and fix a little here and fix a little here is demonstrating decision unawareness. No activity will be completely done, but many will be started.
• I’m-No-Spring-Chickenish – Choosing the activity that will impress most on my pals will probably give the application a nice bells-and-whistle user interface, but no functionality.
• Am-I-My-Brother’s-Keeperish – Politicians usually have a hidden agenda. Some argument comes from their mouth, but the real purpose to start an activity is to put them self in a better position for the future. Cynical, for sure.
• Waterfallish – First fill a big barn with appreciated activities to do. Then not only make a prioritizing schedule, carve it in a never changing rock. And finally follow this plan, even if the sky falls down.
• Arousalish – The activity that feels most fun to start with, is the one to start with – no mater how valuable and how expensive it appears to be.
• Frameworkish – Activities that does not return one single pfennig now, but are expected to make it easier to earn value in the future are only important if you are the real Oracle of Oz. And not even then, since Judy Garland fond that the truth behind the veil was a small man. Instead: think YAGNI.
• Lone-Wolfish – No stakeholder asked for this activity to be done. No one even understands what it is and what it will be used for. But, still a troll is sitting in his cubicle and doing this. And surprisingly a lot of people think he’s so clever, just because they don’t understand what he’s doing.

Conclusion

Many different ideas, assumptions and agendas can control the way I’m prioritizing my activities. If I want to be decision aware, then I need to recognise the sweet scent of flowers as well as the smell of prioritizing strategy anti patterns.

Additional facts:

• The DSDM consortium does not seem to wanting its defined wisdoms spread unlimited as they write on their site about the project management framework Atern: “To sell Atern training, consultancy using Atern as the vehicle, or to be a tool provider for Atern, it is necessary to become a DSDM Licensed Reseller.”
• Kiichiro Toyoda – the son of Toyoda Loom Works founder Sakichi Toyoda – resigned from the company in 1948, at the age of 54.
• The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language tells that a stakeholder is either “One who holds the bets in a game or contest” or “One who has a share or an interest, as in an enterprise”.
• The Yerkes-Dodson Law says that there is an optimal level of arousal for doing maximum performance.