The Old New Thing

Well, actually, the mere notion of "priority" is specifically defined WHEN there's a conflict.

If there're no conflicts, there's no need to define priorities.

I wonder if this is a good way to get out of the invitations to see the latest VP/exec for a talk/Q&A session (in person or the teleconferences)..

At a previous employer, the standing line was:

The nice thing about everything being priority one is that you get to work on whatever you want.

I remember when top priority was (I quote) "Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!". What is it now?

The nice thing about our company is, if you don't agree with our top priority, wait five minutes!

I used to work for a company that had this priority problem with projects. At one point it got so bad that priorities were shifting on almost a daily basis.  

The upper management would announce  everyone is now on project abc, the next day put everyone on project zyx, and later lmno.  The problem when this happens is that everything is a priority and yet nothing is, so nothing gets moved forward. Thus a wheel spins in the mud.

Funny thing is while frustrating, I often found myself laughing to myself at the situation, as the other lower level managers, myself included, tried to determine the real priority and further it.

Well, I've heard managers refer to things as top priorities (emphasis on the ies) rather than just a single top priority.

Of course, that still doesn't explain how they rank top priorities against each other.

In my experience, prioritizing your top priorities is usually the top priority.

The proper way to prioritize your a-list items is to ask your manager, "which one of these top priority items should I work on?"

Preferably without any sarcasm in your voice, and with a straight face.

@SRS - those priorities are:

1) make Intel happy

2) consumer satisfaction

3) developers, developers, developers!

4) make HP happy

Was the person asking the questions, "Fully Vested"?  :-)

Or was that whole FYIFV thing, an urban myth?

There is a famous Dilbert comic about this.

Here is it!

http://www.witiger.com/internationalbusiness/dilbertquality.jpg

Manager: “Remember, quality is our top priority.”

Dilbert: “Question: Is it more important than safety?

Manager: “Ooh… I forgot about that one.”

Dilbert: “Is quality more important than obeying the law?”

Manager: “Well…, probably not.”

Dilbert “If we could maximize shareholder value by selling lower quality items, wouldn’t we have a fiduciary responsibility to do it?

Manager: “I’m sure quality is in the top four.”

Dilbert: “What if we had to lie to achieve quality?

That problem is caused by the Multimedia Class Scheduler Service, which boosts certain priorities in an effort to compensate for the default braindead scheduling policy. Kinda like how SuperFetch and friends try to compensate for resource managing deficiencies.

So, that begs the question, who decides when a question is answered, the answerer or the questioner?

Round here, we have the Lake Wobegon rule of bug-fix priorities: they're all above average.

Robert C. Barth:

I think we've answered your question.

The 'picking between the two' is key. The people who've earned my respect over the years give the answer that you just wrote but would then go on to explain what their choice would be and what the principles behind that choice are.

Tends to reveal an organisation with a very limited view of what constitutes "priority".  The first and most productive change I ever make to an issue tracking/job scheduling implementation (when I get the chance) is to split the "Priority" field into two:  "Importance" and "Urgency".

Something can be crucially important but not at all urgent (we mustn't forget to do this) and equally it might be critically urgent, but not very important (we promised the customer this fix in next weeks release, even though they could live without it).

"Priority" is then derived from Urgency and Importance.  You deal with Important+Urgent issues, then the Urgent issues, then the Important issues and only then deal with anything else that's left (by definition, not urgent and not important).

Same thing as top windows on Windows.

What is the top, front, topmost front window in any given moment? What if top window (or dialog) doesn't have the focus? What is the top window when I have this search dialog, but when I click on the window beneath?

You see, everything is a matter of interpretation ;)

I'm confused; are you actually making a meaningful statement about prioritization, or just attempting to make your coworkers look dumb?

Our issue tracking system has 5 priority levels:

1. High

2. Critical

3. Mission-critical

4. Life-and-death

5. Demo

If the issue was not high priority, obviously they wouldn't bother reporting it (until it is).

"I think I've answered your question"

means: "Sod off!"

:-)

@Jolyon Smith

I would say that important but not urgent comes before urgent but not important, doesn't it?

Even if it is urgent, if it is not important, why bother about it if you have other important tasks? What's the point of your split if you use it wrong?

In addition, urgent and not important: wait that week promised to the customer and then it is not urgent anymore

Well, it's obvious that DRM is top priority for Multimedia Class Scheduler Service.

I can't decide which one of these phrases is more annoying: "I think I've answered your question" or "You haven't answered my question". It probably depends on what side you happen to be on at the moment...

@silly

I'm confused... are you really confused? That's just silly!

"I think I've answered your question"

Means, "You get to choose, but if you pick the wrong one I'm going to blame you."