002. Prioritization
One of the first things I do when coming into a new company is figure out where people are writing tasks down.
The phenomenon I call Task Sprawl is an insidious beast. It spawns slowly, feeding on the best intentions of issue-labellers and kanban-board-organizers. Its hold on your organization's productivity is carefully disguised as reassurance and oversight. Very rarely will any long-term team members be able to detect its presence -- it's simply been there too long, imperceptibly embedded in the process, like paint on the wall.
Task Sprawl symptoms include:
"I don't know what to work on next."
"You spent all of last week on A. Did you do anything for B?"
"Did anyone write down the decision we reached about that bug last week? Where is it?"
"Is XYZ finished yet?"
If your organization is like most, you may have a bit of a Jaws-like feeling about now.
Task Sprawl has a much more significant impact than just the time required to fumble through conversations like these. It can lead to a feeling of overwhelm in managers and engineers alike. It contributes to indecisiveness. It removes autonomy and the initiative to problem-solve from your senior developers. It slows down everyone's ability to produce. In other words: lost time, increased stress, wasted money.
There's only one solution to Task Sprawl: a central, single, prioritized task list.
If that sounds unachievable, if you're already sure of a dozen reasons why it wouldn't work... I hate to tell you that the problem might be you.
Don't worry. Just like other topics covered in these docs, prioritizing to overcome Task Sprawl is a skill you can practice and learn to excel at. Here's how.