I like what Wade says here. In fact, the product management staff has a spreadsheet that does what Wade describes. I am working on a personal method as well.
"How does one who works in a dynamic and fluid environment keep their priorities and tasks from constantly shifting? Well, I think I may have found the answer that will work for me ( and maybe others can use it as well ). I have created an online "threat board" that I keep track of all of the plates that I am currently spinning, and with a glance, I can look at it and tell what is hot, and what is not. I learned this trick from a coupled of very wise men in a previous life who taught me that if you have a aggregation point for all of the various projects and initiatives that you are working on, and you assign a color code (Green - Good, Yellow - Gap w/recovery plan, Red - Gap wo/recovery plan), then you can easily and quickly assess where your efforts and time are best spent. I am trying out this experiment on myself (as any good researcher would do) and then I will introduce my team to the concept. One by-product of the "threat board" is that the creation of weekly status reports becomes a no brainer as all of the information is already there and it just needs to be reformatted for executive consumption.
I previously wrote about my frustrations at not having an enterprise wide road map, well instead of complaining I am going to introduce the "threat board" concept to others within the org and watch it take flight. I will let you all know how it goes in future posts.."
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