I have always felt that if value is the focus of prioritization, the value should be prioritized equally by the risks to delivery. In other words, engaging in powerful questions (Rajagopalan, 2015) helps a lot and this behavior is driven from the leadership mindset (Rajagopalan, 2013). When sufficient focus of risks to delivery or risks to non-compliance exists, value is not delivered as the benefits are not realized! Instead, we run into the challenges of techniques without understanding risks.
Given below are most frequently used prioritization techniques and a brief discussion on what they lack that should be factored if not done consciously.
Technique | Description | Risk Thoughts |
RICE |
| On a positive note, it uses some level of analysis to compute the estimate. But this is a very ambiguous approach for the following reasons.
|
WSTF |
| This approach has the same challenges as RICE but also improves on RICE somewhat significantly.
|
MoSCoW |
| All these four levels (Must, Should, Could, Won't) are subjective interpretations. Granted that there is some amount of categorization, but several ambiguities remain.
As you can see, this approach is a good start but not a good one for prioritization at all. It only helps with a first level of categorization and is not the final level of prioritization. This is the reason why this approach is sometimes associated with Eisenhower Matrix which President Eisenhower used for decision-making on what he needs to address and what he needs to delegate! Another technique I have heard is Yes-No-Not Now-Never. To me, this is analogous to MoSCoW and not much different. |
Kano Model |
| This model is driven from the market research. Almost like a persona expectations of the market behavior. However, while it may serve as an external risk trigger, it does not quantify further (e.g.: deeper dive of PESTLEED, TECOP, etc.) and meet the individual risk driven considerations (e.g.: VRIO) for a product. Again, it is a good categorization for product backlog but does not help with prioritization of the individual items. |
100-Points | This approach is an approach to engage stakeholders to prioritize when more than one is influencing or impacted.
| This approach is fine but still has the challenge of how risks are communicated to the stakeholders and how much risks are factored by the stakeholders. Bias and influence can help a feature be prioritized that the team can't handle or deliver. |
Relative Prioritization | This approach is for the team to prioritize items already prioritized. | This helps with relative prioritization (for instance if two features are high, which one should be delivered first.) |
As you can see, each technique has its own strengths and weaknesses. If it works for you, great! But risks are something that one must quantify and evaluate. In fact, I call such an approach to risk-based prioritization "risk driven development (RDD)". Here, the risks are identified, assessed, and evaluated with a risk exposure score. These risks are associated with requirements as well as the test cases (conformation criteria) as not all requirements are easy to test. Based on the sum of the risk scores on a requirement and test cases, the features can be prioritized. It is possible to use other methods in conjunction with this so long as risks are considered and there is a ratio level scoring mechanism included or at least a good risk breakdown structure included to avoid bias or subjective interpretation.
What are your thoughts? Please share.
Rajagopalan, S. (2013). Essential Leadership behaviors for Agile Transformation. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2013/12/essential-leadership-behaviors-for.html
Rajagopalan, S. (2015). Client Management: The influence of powerful questions.
No comments:
Post a Comment