Agile

As I was drafting my Priority #2 Problem post I could hear readers in my ear saying “You need the Eisenhower matrix – divide work into urgent/not-urgent and important/not-important.” So, a footnote, the problem with the matrix…

While undoubtedly useful for Priority #1 problems – those which are clearly important and/or urgent – the Eisenhower matrix has, at least, three issues in this context.

Firstly, the matrix is binary: things are either urgent or not urgent, and important or not important. Life is seldom that simple. There are usually grey areas: is this urgent? or can it wait?

Then when all the urgent and important things are done and taken away how do you decide between the not-quite-so-important and not-quite-so-urgent? Or maybe between the, “might be urgent” and “might be important” and the “soon to be urgent” and “someone else thinks this is important?”

The search to determine which of several possible work items is the most important and/or urgent itself becomes a costly diversion. Priorities #2s are not so important or urgent that they must be done NOW but benefits are lost when left undone (remember time-value profiles). When working alone you can’t delegate them, and even if you can the effort and/or coordination to delegate them is more than actually doing them.

Second, the Eisenhower matrix has no concept of time. It is a matrix for making decisions were decisions are made and you move on. When there is work to do then making the decision is the first step. Once the decision is made to do something there is real work be done.

That means that doing one thing precludes the others: having made a decision to do A other items, B, C and D, must wait, so each decision carries an opportunity cost. Doing A means not doing B, C and D – or at least not doing them right away.

Plus, the time spent doing A means there is time for doubt (“maybe B was really more important?”) and change (“Emergency – we need C”).

Again, this problem is particularly acute when solo-working although you see it in organisations too. The longer it takes to do work the more time there is to doubt to enter the picture, and the more time for some risk to materialise.

Finally, one problem which doesn’t happen do much when you work solo: what is urgent and what is important are subjective.

In an organisational setting one person may think project A is important while another thinks B is more important than A and third thinks C should be the priority. Finding time for these three people to meet and agree retracts from doing.

Costs of the Priority #2 problem

First is the cost of omission: valuable things don’t get done because more valuable things crowd them out.

Second is the cost of carry: the multitude of should be done wears us down. Individually this manifests itself as cognitive load, your brain knows something needs to be done but you can’t do it. Organisationally it complicates decision making. In both cases it leads to more work and delays trying to decide between priority 2s

Third is the cost of delay: when these things do get done they are less valuable than they would have been if done earlier because the benefits are delayed.

An arbitrary, random, choice between options can be the best decision because it saves time and costs of rational decision making.

Searching for the best option is a fools errand: far better to set a bar and accept everything that passes it. Then optimise the doing rather than argnonise about the best thing to do.

Motivation to do work can be more important than rational decision making. (If you do the one you really want to do first then you will break the deadlock, deliver some value and be ready for the next sooner.)

Be prepared to go into debt to do these things: if you only do what you can afford (money or time) then these things will never get done, their benefits will never get realised and the world will not advance. So if they can meet a hurdle rate, if they makes sense to do, then don’t be worried about borrowing money (or someone else’s time) to get them done.

Leeds is the largest city in Europe without a metro system of some sort. It is a successful city which would benefit from a tram system, and everyone agrees. At times the local council or national government has spent money on the idea and agreed funding to build it but, so far, the decision has always been reversed later.

The Leeds tram is a Priority 2 problem. Most of the time people agree it is a good idea but right now… money is needed elsewhere, Leeds can wait a little while longer. The business case stands up and returns again and again but now is never the right time. On those occasions when it does fight its way up to funding it doesn’t last, something else appears which makes a more urgent case and the tram is pushed back.

Priority #2 problems are things you should do. Things that might be genuinely valuable and beneficial. Things that should not be left but which are not urgent. Things thats can be put off to a better time. Such things find it hard to fight to the top, and when you are doing them it can be hard to focus because you are thinking “Would I be better spending my time on something else?”

The problem with priority 2, P2s, problems is not just that important, worth, things don’t get done. They deserve doing we devote time and energy to trying to get them done. They increase our cognitive load and complicate discussion of what should we do.

Time, energy and resources which would should be productively spend on doing a P2 is spent deciding between P2s.

The P2 problem occurs when all the high priority 1s are done – and the lower priority P3s, P4s, etc. are discounted. How do you choose between multiple things all wanting your time and attention but none clearly more worthy than the others?

P2s are inescapable. P1s get done; P3s, etc. are easily ignored – and if you did get all the P2s done then the problem would occur at the P3 level.

And when you do decide, how do you keep focus knowing something else might be more worthy?

Everyday day I write an index card for what I need to do today. The priority #1 are obvious and get done: things with deadlines soon and things which are important enough to deserve attention. They get done. Next come the P2s. (More about how I organise my work here and in my unfinished Little book of Workflow.)

How do I decide between three, four, five things which are all needed and worth doing but are not urgent? Or clearly worth more than one another?

The P2 problem wastes my time. I agonise about what work to do rather than doing it. It delays work getting done. It delays the benefit of that work and it saps my energy. I’ve lost hours, even days, deliberating between which of several P2s should get my time.

And when I do decide between P2s it is hard to stay focused. I continue to wonder: shouldn’t I be doing something else? I’m sure this isn’t really important enough…. one wants a to make a rational choice and do the most important/valuable thing, but when its not clear what that is time is diverted into search.

(Actually, I prioritise by order, 1, 2, 3 so the P2 problem occurs when all the important stuff has been done and the unimportant has been discounted. These days, when I recognise a P2 problem I get out my dice. I number each P2 and roll the dice to decide. Even if I just give myself 20 minutes Pomodoro style I’ve broken the deadlock.)

While I’ve always assumed other people have P2 problems it is only recently I’ve realised that this occurs at organisational level and, as the Leeds tram shows, government level.

Unfortunately, while I may have solved the problem at a personal level I can’t solve it so easily at the corporate or government level. We don’t expect our Governments to roll dice, they are expected to make a justifiable decision between projects. And then stick with it.

(More about the Leeds tram. Tram photo (c) Kurt Rasmussen taken from Wikicommons.)

There are those who think “projects can save money by going slow.” I’ve never quite understood this because the same things still need doing but even serious people say it (HS2 anyone?). Actually, they are trading reduced expenditure now for longer expenditure in the future. Maybe that means that less money needs to be borrowed now so interest payments are less over all, perhaps.

This kind of thinking also leads companies to split resources between multiple work streams: rather than having a team of 4 people work on 1 thing and get it done quickly the same 4 people work on 4 different things and all 4 get done slowly.

I’ve long argued that “shorter fatter” is better because that means the return on investment starts flowing sooner. It also means there is no “bulge” at the end when 4 projects complete and everyone is racing for the same scarce resources to complete.

This longer-slower thinking is common in the project mindset but is is absolute rubbish.

I see two reasons why people may choose to believe this.

One, people don’t like making decisions, and especially don’t like saying No. So rather than cancel a project it can be reduced in size so nobody is upset.

Two, people care far more about cost than benefits. Add to that, most people don’t understand cost of delay.

So what should teams do?

Recognise that when you start work on something you open a risk window. If you aren’t doing anything then there is no risk of doing – there may be risk of not doing but that is another story. Once you open the window you are at risk, at the very least you are at risk of needing to write-off expenditure in future.

The more you spend the more the more there is at risk. And the big risk is often that there is nothing to show for the expenditure.

What most people miss is: the longer the window is open the more chance you have of a risk happening. If your project last three months the chances of loosing a key member of staff in that time is low, if it lasts one year the risk is higher and if it lasts five years it will certainly happen.

Similarly, the chances of adverse weather hitting your construction site, a competitor launching a rival product, new technology rendering your work obsolete, a pandemic hitting or one of a million other things are all increased when your project take longer.

Once you start work you are in a race against risk.

Perhaps my industry knew this once upon a time and that is why IT projects used to have long drawn out requirements phases: low cost, low risk. Only when the coding starts and the costs go up does the risk get serious.

But we now recognise that the more requirements you gather the greater the risk that they change. The requirements risk window opens the day you start writing them. Only when you show customers working product do you know if you got them write.

Then, once work starts and big money is being spent go at it hell-for-leather. Concentrate your resources, aim to close the risk window but also deliver: early delivery further reduces risk but also increases the return-on-investment because there is no return, its not all spending.

My first blog of 2025, and following my annual procedure I have created a new archive for this year’s posts. Then I reviewed all posts that didn’t get published last year. Among all the posts you will have enjoyed last year there are half as many again which didn’t get published. Half a dozen have been carried over but most, about 4 times as many have been discarded.

A few of these are completely written posts awaiting a final edit but which I decided weren’t worth publishing.
A few more are posts I started to write but decided to they were too off-topic or too personal.
A few more never got beyond the first sketch.
And the remainder never got beyond the title and a note or two.

Broadly I’m following the same pattern I have been advocating with OKRs and Backlogs: decide your goals, drive work from goals and discard the backlog every few months. Let ideas go makes space for new ones, and if any are so great that I really should have them, then I’m sure I’ll think of them again.

It occurred to me the other day that this is the same logic I use with newspapers. I still buy and read a physical newspaper several times a week. There are several reasons I like the physical versions but one of them is the timeliness of it.

I buy the newspaper in the morning. The news has been curated for me: I don’t go hunting across websites to find news I might like. Then, at the end of the day the paper goes in the recycling. If I didn’t read a piece then too late. I had 14 hours to read it, tomorrow is new day with new news.

In all these cases it is only by letting go of the past – of ideas and partially done work which I’ve invested in – that I have space for the new. I wager that new ideas will be worth more than those of the past which didn’t make the grade. I accept that I might loose a few valuable ideas but I also know that if they are really good I’ll probably think of them again.

Now a question: are our technologies keeping the past alive too long?

Since my blogging is all electronic it would cost nothing to keep those old blog ideas hanging around. Similarly our backlogs only became bottomless pits when we stopped writing them on index cards.

Digital newspaper allow you to read today’s news, some of tomorrow’s and any day in the past – this means navigating them can be hard. I’m regularly struck by the way many blogs and online journals hide the publication date.

Facebook makes it hard to loose friends and LinkedIn makes it hard to forget past work colleagues. We are captive to past posts, pictures and comments.

Forgetting has a role to play in letting in the new and allowing us to advance.

Just because we can keep the past current should we? I don’t think so. Even if it costs nothing in terms of storage and archives the past makes it harder to see what is before us because we are trying to see so much more.

(Image from Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez on Unsplash)