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Topic on Talk:Team Practices Group/Best Practices Handbook/Archive 2

Prioritizing according to goals

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AGomez (WMF) (talkcontribs)

There's an issue I've been running into with the distinction between priorities and goals. Quarterly goals should be quantifiable - something you can check off if completed. Some high priorities may be ongoing maintenance or support tasks.

For example, there is a large volume of work just to keep things floating that doesn't fit into an aspirational goal in mature software systems, particularly in systems with lots of external dependencies (like, say, payment processors). In fundraising, we also face supporting campaigns that are running year-round, bringing up new issues all the time. Both of these categories of work can't be predicted and are non-negotiable highest priority. We will always opt to keep the ship afloat rather than complete a new feature request.

I'm interested in other PM and TPG thoughts on this. It's not compelling for me/my team to write a quarterly "make sure money can come in" or "be responsive to last minute changes by external vendors" goals, so ours have been focused on new work and stabilizing - aspirational objectives that we plan to complete in the remainder of the time.

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