Prioritization? What Prioritization?

Dear Bonnie,
I’m working on a project whose budget was cut by 50%. I’ve read that prioritizing requirements is one way to handle this. That way, we can reduce scope by delivering only the most important items. When I asked stakeholders to do this, 90% of the requirements came back as priority 1. They didn’t even have the decency to use priority 2. The few that weren’t priority 1 were labeled priority 1A!

How can I deliver successfully after this budget cut?

Signed,
Beg, Borrow, and Steal?

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Dear BB&S,
Oof! Cutting the budget in half is like ordering a new car and getting a 2010 Honda Civic smelling like cat puke.

You’re on the right track asking stakeholders to prioritize their requirements. But you underestimated their ability to consider everything a life-or-death necessity. You need to give them a prioritization model.

Here are two possible approaches:

1) Pairwise Comparison (a.k.a. The Cage Match Method)

This works well when you have a manageable number of requirements. A lot like an MMA cage match, stakeholders pit each requirement against each other to see who walks out unassisted. When you’re done, the ones with the most victories stagger to the top. Here’s an example:

1. The lower half of the table is blacked out because all the one-on-one comparisons are completed by filling out the top half of the chart. (Comparing Req 1 to Req 2 is the same as comparing Req 2 to Req 1 so you don’t have to do the comparison twice.)
2. Counting the votes gives you the priority. In this example, the voting is:

1. Req 2 = 3
2. Req 3 = 3
3. Req 1 = 2
4. Req 4 = 2
5. Req 5= 0

1. Two requirements are tied at 3, and two at 2 but you still have a prioritization. Just compare the tied elements to each other! 

1. When Req 2 was compared to Req 3, Req 3 won, so Req 2 is a lower priority than Req 3
2. When Req 1 was compared to Req 4, Req 4 won, so Req 1 is lower priority than Req 4

1. The resulting priority is:

1. Req 3
2. Req 2
3. Req 4
4. Req 1
5. Req 5

This process works if you have up to about 40 requirements. More than that, and you’ll have a spreadsheet that looks like a conspiracy theorist’s string diagram.

2) The “Split in Half – Twice” Technique

If you’ve got a boatload of requirements, this method keeps things under control:

1. Ask stakeholders to cut the list in half—choosing only the requirements they’d keep if they could only have 50%. After doing this, you have two lists – top half and bottom half.
2. Repeat the process with each half, splitting the top half into two and the bottom half into two. That gives you four priority levels for the requirements.

This approach is brutally effective because it forces stakeholders to make hard choices rather than clinging to their entire wish list like their teddy bear from childhood.

Give one of these methods a shot depending on how many requirements there are. Besides keeping prioritization from turning into an “everything is critical” party, you won’t have to consider selling your (or better idea, the stakeholders’) organs on the black market to make up the difference.

Cheers,
Bonnie

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