Deliver value sooner
Identify high-impact projects and focus on them
Think of the projects you have to do at work as a FIFO (first-in, first-out) queue. Meaning that you work on each project in the order that they arrive. If your projects all have similar complexity and importance, this FIFO queue will work great. The project waiting the longest gets done first and you move on to the next.
Now, I would bet that your projects don't have similar complexity and importance, and you probably don't have just one project queue with a clear next item to start working on. In this setting, how can you deliver value sooner?
Identify high-impact projects by calculating each project's Cost of Delay.
To calculate the Cost of Delay of a project you first need to calculate the expected value added by the project. The definition of value added will depend on what matters to your company and your customers. In general, you can think of it as some difference between the world before and after the project is completed. For example:
| Project Name | Expected Value Added | Cost of Delay |
|---|---|---|
| New feature A | $208k/year in new subscriptions | $4k/week |
| Remove legacy B | $52k/year in savings | $1k/week |
| Automated testing of C | $30k/hour during crash (avg 30min/week last 12mo) | $15k/week |
If you are only looking at project names you may be tempted to spend 80% of your time on "New feature A" and 20% of your time in "Automated testing of C." Once you calculate the Cost of Delay, it is clear that you should focus first on "Automated testing of C."
Focus on high-impact projects by limiting your work in progress.
- invisible inventory