How to Prioritize – A New Approach – stacyZiegler Boulder Photographer Reinvention

I sat here today wondering what to come and write about.  I read the comments to the post “The What” and it seems that some of you are either performing your own “requirements analysis” or will be making your prioritizations so I thought it might be a good time to discuss an effective way to prioritize.  I see people do priorities down the list from 1 to N, but from a project perspective this never seemed to work simply because we don’t then see all the items that are essential just to function.  We end up looking at our next on the list vs. looking at the whole.

The first step is really envisioning our “business case” writing our story if you will of what this looks like.  After this is done I will list all the whats to meet this, as I talked about in the last post.  Only AFTER all the whats are identified can I prioritize.  In this process of my dream life there are two steps I see that need to occur before I can even think about the prioritizing.  First, is my vision strong enough?  Do I have everything that I see in my future, our story as a family and a business owner, down and created so anyone can understand?  This is my own personal “business case”.  From here I will need to write down all the WHATS that need to occur.  A short example list could be:

1. Have a home
2. Have home in safe neighborhood
3. Have home in neighborhood where children will attend a top school
4. Have home payment not exceed 1/4th of our monthly family income
5. Have a home on 1/2 an acre
6. Have a greenhouse in back yard

Now these are just examples of different “whats” you see there is no thought here they are short and sweet.  Mostly they are active verb frases.  Now here is the key – Prioritization.  For many prioritization is ranking.  In the case of requirments analysis the prioritization is done on 4 levels, P1 thorugh P4.  P1 – Absolutely must have.  The project, “Dream Life” in this example, cannot work without it.  You see if this is ranked you woud naturally go for #1 then 2, and etc, but really if #3 is still a P1 priority and you don’t do it.  Your project will fail.  Now this is a bit subjective because of course one would live and thus “function” without a house, as in this example, but where our  clearly defined vision/business case is defined it is a “must have”.   For my example here, requirements 1,2 & 4 are all “P1’s” my dream will not function without these items.  Once all the absolutes are labeled you can start over and outline the P2 requirements; this is what is really wanted, makes the “project” better and is highly desirable, but if you did not have it your dream would still function.  Now for me here #3 is a P2 because I would be okay driving our children to a school if needed.  We have charter schools here so the neighborhood school, although is our first preference is not absolutely mandatory for meeting my “project”.  Does that make sense – it would make our project truly better, but would still work without it.

We will cover the P3’s and P4’s later on.  First the most important thing is to develop the vision;  come up with the “business case”.  Defining all the whats that are needed for this and then putting into the first 2 major buckets.  These two levels will cover about 80% of all the whats that are listed for the plan in all of our projects (a.k.a. lives).

Hopefully you can see how just using four levels of priorities is liberating and lets us figure out what is deep in our souls and our true needs.  I know one of my “P1’s” is to laugh from the belly.  Here is a picture I found today of myself doing just that.  I am off to smile and laugh and I hope you are as well.