On development teams, balancing priorities while keeping focus is hard. Without an intentional approach you can quickly find your team submerged in a lot of different work, hurting progress on your most important goals.
But the real world is messy. Prioritization is hard. Work comes in many shapes and sizes. Unplanned work pops up at the worst times.
Managers face many difficult questions:
Should you have multiple work streams on your team? If so, how many? How do you balance long and short-term priorities? How should you handle unplanned work? What about on-call? How big should your team be?
This post outlines some approaches I’ve found effective in helping my teams maintain focus and get stuff done, amidst all the chaos and unpredictability of the real-world.
Continue reading “Prioritization, multiple work streams, unplanned work. Oh my!”