{"id":2833,"date":"2023-03-23T11:36:41","date_gmt":"2023-03-23T16:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rpchurchill.com\/wordpress\/?p=2833"},"modified":"2023-03-23T12:54:20","modified_gmt":"2023-03-23T17:54:20","slug":"prioritization-and-backlog-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rpchurchill.com\/wordpress\/posts\/2023\/03\/23\/prioritization-and-backlog-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Prioritization and Backlog Management"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prioritization and backlog management are two sides of the same coin. As described in the BABOK<\/a>, an important difference is that backlog management is a more specific case within the broader topic of prioritization.<\/p>\n

The BABOK discusses prioritization in terms of business analysis information. Backlog management typically involves tasks or work items. As a practical matter, the criteria on which prioritization is carried out in both cases is the same. Considerations involve value, risk, difficulty of implementation, dependencies, and so on. <\/p>\n

It seems to me that prioritization can involve qualities of a design or approach, determining which customers to serve first, and the order in which tasks should be worked on. While backlog items typically involve defined collections of work to be done, they are ultimately driven by the same, more general considerations.<\/p>\n

A very important consideration in prioritization involves recognizing and making trade-offs of various kinds. Many types of trade-offs are possible, and all involve the economic way of thinking. Economics, after all, is best defined as the study of making choices under conditions of scarcity, and this involves the recognition that we always<\/em> live and work under conditions of scarcity. One discussion on trade-offs is embedded in a webinar I gave on What Business Analysts Should Know About Software<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While this specific talk involved software, you can imagine that different trade-offs will be germane to other potential products and services. Considering the iPhone, for example, Apple could not produce them in every possible color. Instead, different color options (moving in a direction from conservative to increasingly bold over time) have been released only slowly, to where there remain only six color options after fifteen years. That is, the designers and managers at Apple had to look at the costs and practicality of producing devices in different colors.<\/p>\n

Computing<\/strong>
\n\u2022 execution speed
\n\u2022 response time
\n\u2022 memory usage
\n\u2022 disk usage
\n\u2022 clarity
\n\u2022 modularity
\n\u2022 maintainability
\n\u2022 reusability
\n\u2022 abstraction
\n\u2022 language choice(s)
\n\u2022 protocols
\n\u2022 scalability
\n\u2022 uptime
\n\u2022 security<\/p>\n

People and Methods<\/strong>
\n\u2022 developers
\n\u2022 managers
\n\u2022 data collectors
\n\u2022 analysts
\n\u2022 testers
\n\u2022 users
\n\u2022 customers
\n\u2022 speed of development
\n\u2022 reduction of rework
\n\u2022 popularity of languages and tools
\n\u2022 industry trends
\n\u2022 larger societal trends<\/p>\n

Cost<\/strong>
\n\u2022 capital vs. ongoing
\n\u2022 fixed vs. variable
\n\u2022 licensing
\n\u2022 hardware
\n\u2022 third-party
\n\u2022 maintenance and support
\n\u2022 upgradability
\n\u2022 modifiability<\/p>\n

Another classic discussion of trade-offs involves the Iron Triangle of cost, time, and quality (or features). I have written on this often<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The BABOK describes four different approaches to prioritization in its formal description of the technique:<\/p>\n