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.