Peer to Peer Magazine

46 T he world seems to get busier and busier each year and the technolo project list gets longer and longer. I hope you're lucky enough to work in an organization where there are more good ideas than there are resources to implement them or money to afford them. This is situation normal in most organizations these days and I think it's healthy. Of course, it has a consequence that you have to prioritize your efforts all the time. Inside the IT department, this brings its own special challenges. Setting some priorities is straightforward. There are some things that just have to be done. They're survival activities for the organization you work in. When it comes to prioritizing the other activities and particularly projects, there can often be a complex set of interactions that you have to consider. It's also easy for individuals or the whole organization to get distracted by things that improve the basic infrastructure or are new and shiny. There's a model I use when thinking about projects and innovation in an organization that I hope allows a reasonable balance to be maintained between the different types of activity and the different outcomes that are being sought. First and foremost; those things that just have to be done! The simplest and most stringent hurdle for something to achieve this status should be, will the organization cease to exist if we don't do this? Typically, there isn't anything that meets that criteria and you can move things out of this category and into one of the categories outlined in this article. If you imagine a classic quadrant (see diagram) where the two axes are value to the organization and complexity to implement. You can put each project into one of the quadrants and that can show you whether you have the right balance of priorities to move the organization forward in a way that maintains the consensus about what is valuable and maintains the reputation of IT as a business aligned department. Too much emphasis on one quadrant quickly leads to end user dissatisfaction and in turn that Project Priorities B Y P A U L D O M N I C K There isn't time, there isn't time, to do all the things we want to do…. A series of articles based on the following premise: "When we challenge ourselves, we make better choices." In these articles I will explore core concepts that are pervasive in the IT community and the legal IT community and challenge their validity. The articles will be written from the perspective of one who disagrees with the accepted wisdom and is challenging the status quo. The goal being to stimulate reflection by the reader and to give them some tools to help shape their thoughts. While I don't hold all the contrary views expressed, I have found in my professional life that challenging myself shapes how I approach things and leads to better results.

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