Prioritize Projects - Move Many Things a Few Inches Or a Few Things Many Inches by Todd Gettelfinger

Today, I had a conversation with a client regarding process work that he's undertaking for his business. As a growing small business, the client has scaled to the point where the founders need to get out of the way and transition from doers to managers (and later to leaders). To make this transition, they are focusing on the importance of adding enough structure to the business to allow the team to own their work and deliver the same high quality service. The client is in the early stages of defining a consistent process, building tools to strengthen the process, defining the positions that own and support each process, and building performance measurements to drive quality.

As the client and I discussed their issues and ways to solve them, the client grew more and more concerned as the list of good ideas increased. The list contained work that ranged from small to medium sized projects. Even the small projects were several days of work time. The list drove real concern because everything is important and everything must get done, but the client didn't really know where and how to get started checking things off the list.

A common response to this situation is that we just start working on the whole list or at least many things on the list. We start brainstorming about everything on the list. We start working on everything on the list. This sometimes leads to what I call the "move many things a few inches" approach. This almost always leads to a freak out moment somewhere down the line. It also typically leads to crappy results because we just starting running a marathon without any training. Fundamentally, we make a couple mistakes in these situations:

* We fail to acknowledge that resources are finite. ALWAYS! I know that we get pressure to get everything done and sometimes we ignore this fact. We think that we are a work super hero who can get everything done just by working hard. The sooner we realize that there is a limit to our time, we can manage it better.
* We start building without a blueprint. We don't have a plan. It's hard to build anything without taking a few measurements, planning out your materials, and planning how you will systematically construct your building. Even for the smallest projects, it's important to develop a blueprint.
* We forget to prioritize. We all know this is important and yet we overlook taking the deliberate steps to pick the most important projects. The next time you are faced with a list of projects that exceeds your capacity, pull out the list below and use it as a quick guide for better planning. These high-level steps will at least help get the highest priority projects kicked off quickly.

1. Write a couple sentences to describe each project on your list - Create descriptions that help clarify what the projects entail and what objectives they will accomplish
2. Rank the top projects on your list - Determine some basic criteria and use it to develop a priority ranking of the projects
3. Pick the top projects on the list - Select the highest ranking projects. The number of items you pick should be based on how many projects you and your team can effectively handle at one time.
4. Define a project charter for the top projects on your list - The charter can be just a couple paragraphs, but should at least document the background, rationale, objectives, scope, and deliverables for the project. The level of detail should be enough to ensure that clear expectations are set for the project.
5. Assign one owner for each project - When possible, delegate the projects and make one person accountable for successful completion of the project.
6. Set deadlines - Get buy-in and input from the owner so they clearly commit to the deadlines that include regular milestones so that you can check on progress
7. Develop an approach - Ask each owner to develop a project plan and explain how they are going to manage the project. The amount of effort that should go into this step is dependent on the size and complexity of the project..
8. Develop a high-level plan for the items that didn't make the top of your list - Lays out how you'll attack them after getting the top few done.

All these prioritization and planning steps should be used on every project regardless of size. The key is to scale them based on the risk, sensitivity, and size of each project. If you follow these steps, you'll be more likely to deliver quality results faster. In other words, you can move a few things many inches rather than many things a few inches.