Prioritisation
Work prioritisation
A practical way to order team work, handle new requests, make trade-offs visible and review priorities against real capacity.
Work prioritisation means deciding what to advance, what to defer and what changes when a new request arrives. Start with the results the team has agreed to deliver. Compare competing work against the consequences of delay, deadlines, dependencies and available capacity. A priority list is useful only if someone can make the trade-offs it implies.
Put commitments and incoming work in one view
Bring together work already promised, recurring service duties, work underway and new requests. Describe each item as a result with an owner and a point at which someone can use it. “Prepare the client proposal for approval” is clearer than “work on proposal”.
Keep fixed obligations visible. A team covering customer enquiries cannot plan as though every hour is available for project work. A date requested by a colleague is worth examining, but it does not automatically outrank an agreed delivery date.
For each item, ask:
- What happens if it waits, and to whom?
- Is there a fixed deadline or dependency? Who set it?
- What result will the work enable?
- What skill, approval or service coverage does it need?
- Can the scope be reduced while still meeting the need?
These questions support judgement; they do not produce an objective score. Where an answer is uncertain, name the assumption and who can resolve it.
Key Questions to Ask Before Committing to New Work
- What happens if it waits, and to whom?
- Is there a fixed deadline or dependency? Who set it?
- What result will the work enable?
- What skill, approval or service coverage does it need?
- Can the scope be reduced while still meeting the need?
Agree on an order the team can use
Choose a manageable set of outcomes for the current planning period. Put the rest in a visible order or give them a review date. Name who can change commitments that affect customers or other teams. The people doing the work can explain effort, dependencies and risks, but should not have to settle incompatible promises made by different sponsors.
A priority record can be brief: the outcome, its position, the reason, owner, next review point and what would cause a change. Include necessary service and quality checks. If everything is marked “highest priority”, ask which result may slip when another request arrives.
An important item without an immediate deadline may need time before it becomes a crisis. A small request may be worth advancing if it removes a dependency for several people. In either case, consider the work it displaces.
Revisit priorities when demand changes
When incoming work changes demand, compare its team-level consequences with agreed outcomes and capacity. Use the organisation’s established response route for live service failures or safety concerns. The person with authority over affected commitments should decide whether priorities change, and the team should make resulting trade-offs visible.
Urgency and importance are useful prompts. A four-box label cannot settle authority, service obligations or conflicting deadlines.
Eisenhower Matrix: Prioritising Work by Urgency and Importance
- Urgent & Important
- Do immediately (e.g., safety incident, critical client deadline)
- Important, Not Urgent
- Schedule (e.g., strategic planning, team development)
- Urgent, Not Important
- Delegate (e.g., routine admin, non-critical requests)
- Not Urgent, Not Important
- Eliminate (e.g., low-value meetings, redundant reports)
How to Revisit Priorities When New Requests Arrive
- Assess ImpactCompare new request against agreed outcomes, deadlines and team capacity
- Check AuthorityIdentify who has decision-making power over affected commitments
- Make Trade-offs VisibleDocument what is delayed or deprioritised to accommodate the new work
- Communicate ChangesShare updated priorities with stakeholders and team members
Limit starts so priorities can finish
A long ordered list still fails if every item is started. Agree when work counts as in progress and how much the team can actively carry through a defined part of its workflow. Start another item when there is room, or make an explicit exception that identifies the displaced work. Keep blocked work visible.
The appropriate limit depends on the work and service responsibilities. It is a team policy to inspect and adjust, not a universal number or a measure of individual effort.
Make project trade-offs explicit
For project work, make the desired benefits and boundaries clear before comparing options. Atlassian’s trade-off analysis identifies cost, scope, quality, time and risk as dimensions a team may need to balance; agreeing which matter most helps people explain what they are protecting when circumstances change.
Set relevant parameters such as budget, timeline and quality standards early enough to use them in decisions. Then compare the consequences of alternatives: finishing faster may require extra spending, put pressure on team members or reduce quality, while cutting costs may mean the result meets fewer user needs or takes longer.
A useful discussion ranks which trade-offs the team is prepared to make first and which it would prefer to avoid. Involve stakeholders while defining the project’s goals, scope and parameters so their concerns and knowledge can inform the decision and build a shared understanding of the intended result.
Agreeing trade-offs at the outset does not make them permanent. Revisit them when new information emerges or priorities need to change, and check that any adjustment still supports the intended benefits. This gives the team a basis for explaining why a change in time, scope, cost, quality or risk is acceptable, and what it means for the other commitments.
Trade-off Dimensions for Project Work: Cost, Scope, Quality, Time, Risk
- CostBudget constraints may limit resources or require external funding
- ScopeReducing features can speed delivery but may affect user needs
- QualityLower quality may meet timelines but risks long-term maintenance
- TimeAccelerating delivery may increase pressure on team members
- RiskUnmanaged risk can lead to project failure or compliance issues
Review the decisions
At a regular review, check which agreed results advanced, which are waiting and whether earlier trade-offs still make sense. Ask about changed demand, missed dependencies and work returned for correction. Reorder the remaining work openly. A completed task count alone cannot show whether the needed result is ready to use.
If the plan repeatedly requires more work than the team can do, changing its order will not create capacity. Reconsider scope, dates, staffing or service coverage with the people affected. Persistent high workloads may also need attention as a work-design risk.
In this guide
- Comparing urgent requests with agreed prioritiesAssess an urgent work request against current commitments, identify the response window and agree on what moves if it takes precedence.
- Limiting work in progressChoose what a work-in-progress limit covers, decide what happens when it is full and review blocked work without hiding demand.
- Deciding what not to do this weekMake a realistic weekly plan by explicitly deferring, reducing, transferring or stopping work that will not fit.
