Proposed redefining of priorities for this repo

[iteles]

As a person who is frequently assigned to issues in the hq repo, I need everyone to be clear on what the various labels mean so that I don't end up disregarding them because they are misused.

Case in point: there are 23 priority-1 issues assigned to me. If something truly important is assigned to me, there is now no way of communicating that.

"Everything is a top priority" is the kind of BS I spend days of my life coaching clients out of.

This particular repo is a little insane:

Suggested course of action:

• Demote everything in this repo by 1 priority level
• Agree what constitutes each priority level
• Add a note to the readme with the agreed levels

Proposed levels:

• priority-1 used only for emergencies and things that need to get done in the next 48 hours
  • These issues have to have a clear deadline and 'why?' in the description
  • This label is a "drop everything and do this" label, so be careful when assigning to other people's assigned issues
  • Sometimes these will be things that are unexpected
• priority-2 for issues that need to be carried out this week
• priority-3 for things that are important and should be next on the list
  • Issues should not sit in this priority bucket for more than 4 weeks without review, at which point they need to be promoted to p2, demoted to p4 or have a comment added as to why they are still p3
• priority-4 for things that need to be fully discussed and agreed but the overall feeling is they should be carried out in the coming months
• priority-5 for things that are just ideas
  • This list should be reviewed once a month
  • Once a discussion has been had, they are promoted to the appropriate priority or left in p5 as a back-burner conversation

[ghost]

@iteles we could always make a priority-0 label 😆

[ghost]

@iteles I have cleared my p1s in-line with suggestion in this issue

[Jbarget]

@iteles I think it may be confusing for us as during sprints we assign priorities based on the order they need to be done. I imagine most teams start by adding priority-1 labels to the "scaffolding" of the project, not because its time critical (I guess a sprint is always time critical) but because its intuitive.

So having the same labels priority-n for both admin and dev work might be confusing as they're being used in different ways across the organisation.

[iteles]

@markwilliamfirth 😬 This is still very much an open proposal!
The idea was to downgrade everything at once as that's a bit easier in the github interface but I can try and work around it by removing issues assigned to you in the filters.

@Jbarget In my experience priority 1 (the sky is falling, drop everything and do just this) and priority 5 (just an idea) are used in the same way across all dwyl projects. priority 2s also tend to be 'these are important and need to be done next' issues. It's the 3s and 4s that are slightly different and from what I've seen, these are a little subjective from project to project.
Having one system that works for both is ideal, I'm proposing we trial this approach to see if it does work. You're very right in that it might not, but I'd like to test it out 😊

[Jbarget]

ah definitely! I didnt mean to imply that it wont work, was just giving my experience of things :)

#onesystemtorulethemall

[nelsonic]

Priority and Urgency are related but different.

I would suggest having a deadline metadata in the issue title and/or description to aid with prioritisation.

I agree that having too many priority-1 issues "devalues" the importance of the label.
But I don't think "downgrading" the priority of all issues is a good way to "solve" this.

We should definitely be clear on what a priority-1 issue means within @dwyl
and to me that means anything that is costing/losing us money each day that goes by.

For example: Focus Hub is costing us real money each day because it's not got enough paying customers ... Yet, this is not identified as a priority-1 issue in FocusHub:
https://github.com/dwyl/focushub/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aissue%20is%3Aopen%20label%3Apriority-1

I cannot see an issue mentioning the word FocusHub on HQ:
https://github.com/dwyl/hq/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aissue%20is%3Aopen%20focushub

Or https://github.com/dwyl/hq/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aissue%20is%3Aopen%20quietspace%20

The empty ("half-full" if you prefer) co-working space is the second most costly thing... 💸

As for the other issues marked as priority-1 they are all costing us money each day that goes by without them being done, so they fit my criteria for "highest priority".

ideally we should have an internal "triage" system for determining how much money is being lost each day the issue is not resolved, and order the issues based on that number.
and eventually get down to zero priority-1 issues.

[iteles]

There were at least 3 priority 1 issues on FH related to things that were related to getting more people in. Not sure what happened there...

Agree that priority isn't just about urgency.
Whether or not something is costing us money or upsetting dwylers is actually how I determine how quickly we need to take action on something. This is why accounts #229 and #182 have been priority-1 issues since early February.

I'm assuming these haven't been complete yet because the value of the p1 label has been diluted massively by the problem I'm outlining above, hence this issue.

I seem to have left off the last step in the plan from the above: review the p2s and determine if any are priority 1s. For me, #229 (of which #321 is the first step) and #182 have been the highest priority for 4 months and would remain that way, as well as the business direction issues that sit on my plate.

[ghost]

@iteles what's the next step in this issue?

[ghost]

After reviewing the backlog this doesn't appear to be an issue anymore (plz reopen if you disagree)

[iteles]

Reopening as the priority-1 issues mentioned in #349 (comment) were still not addressed almost 5 months later when this issue was closed, so it's clearly still an issue.

[rub1e]

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

The lines will always be blurred, but the definitions seem sensible to me. Perhaps they weren't the issue

[iteles]

@rub1e 😄 The definitions aren't the issue, the issue is they haven't yet been applied 😛

[nelsonic]

This issue has way too much noise from "Ghost". Closing.
GOTO: dwyl/labels#87