Practical prioritisation
Dwight D Eisenhower famously said in 1954 “What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important”. It seems he did not invent the idea. He merely articulated it. But it has left a significant mark on how managers have prioritised team efforts ever since.
More recently, Stephen Covey popularised this as a time management quadrant in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey considered tasks according to importance and urgency and drew a prioritisation quadrant.
The trick to using the prioritisation quadrant is to put every entry in your To Do list into one of the four quadrants.
Quadrant 1: Necessary
Important tasks (you must do them) that are urgent (they have deadlines you do not control). You have no choice but to get them done, but they may not get you closer to important goals. Things like completing timesheets on time, submitting a tender for a new project, filing expense reports, and taking the bins out on collection night.
Quadrant 2: Where the magic happens
Important tasks that are not urgent. These are strategic tasks directed toward goals. Things like exercise, planning, strengthening relationships, relaxing, and deep thinking. You should maximise the time you spend here. You might impose deadlines on these tasks, but that is your choice.
Quadrant 3: Distractions
Unimportant tasks that are urgent. They do not align with your goals. Things like attending unnecessary meetings, checking your Facebook feed several times during the day, or producing reports that no one reads. Clearly you should minimise time spent here.
Quadrant 4: Waste of time
Unimportant tasks that are not urgent. Things like checking your Facebook feed every 15 minutes or blankly watching TV for hours in the evening. These are a waste of time, so you should just not do them.
Then sort your To Do list as follows:
Plan to spend as much quality time as possible in Q2. For example, if you are a morning person, block off periods to work on Q2 tasks first thing in the morning.
Use gaps in quality time to tick off tasks in Q1. You need to plan time in your schedule to do the important urgent stuff.
Minimise distractions (Q3), and only allow yourself to do these at certain times of the day, for example immediately after lunch or afternoon tea.
Avoid anything in Q4 like the plague. If a task is important and not urgent, you don’t need to do it, so remove these tasks from your To Do list. If it is important to you, promote it to Q1 or Q2.
That’s all there is to it.
Now, let’s look at the prioritisation quadrants, as interpreted for Product Managers.
How do you prioritise a feature request? For our purposes here, let’s assume you have a way to decide how important and how urgent a feature request is (that’s a topic for another time).
Here’s the advice, reduced to a modified quadrant diagram.
Quadrant 1: Necessary
Escalate it and do it now. If a feature really is important and urgent, you’ll need to get it done ASAP.
Quadrant 2: Where the magic happens
Plan for it in your roadmap. Your product roadmap should be an ordered list of these features. Important but not urgent. In other words, aligned with your strategic goals, where you determine the timing.
Quadrant 3: Distractions
Try to delay or delegate things that distract the team from what really matters.
Quadrant 4: Waste of time
Just say no.
Clearly the quadrant approach is a simplified view of prioritisation when it comes to product feature requests. But it is a good place to start if too many feature requests are overwhelming your planning efforts. Optimise the time you and your team spend in Q2. At the end of the day, that’s where the magic happens!
