I was asked yesterday by a software engineer how to decide what task to tackle next on a project. I was happy to hear the question; it told me that the developer taking ownership and responsibility for the project.

The general principle I like to follow in setting priority is this: do first what is important and easy, do last what is unimportant and difficult.

Here’s how to determine the priority of the tasks to be done:

1. Write down the lists of tasks
2. Rate the relative importance of each task using a number between 1 and 5 (1=important)
3. Rate the relative difficulty of each task using a number between 1 and 5 (1=easy)
4. Calculate priority as importance multiplied by difficulty

The calculation will give you low numbers for those tasks which are important and easy and high numbers for those which are unimportant and difficult. Tackle first the items with priority 1.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 6:21 and is filed under software engineering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.