Effort doesn’t matter if you are not aware of priority. What comes first? Why? Business value? Opportunity? Business risk?

Some people are waiting for a time effort to define priority… worth nothing if you can’t work on it.

Before effort you need priority. And before priority you need time. Capacity!

Do you have time available? Then we can talk about priority. And then we can discuss effort.

Why time before effort? Because it’s not about one hour once in a lifetime. We need cadence. We need time to think, to miss shots and learn new stuff as we move along. It’s about process time. Time to make stuff happen. If you have capacity definition, you can decide what will be in it. With cadence!

Why priority before effort. Make sure you understand what’s really important. After you figure that out, and you have time available to use into that learning, discovery and delivery process, you can understand effort.

You are going to need more time? If you understand priority and start working with the time and understanding you have now, you will be able to run the cycle to create more time, because it’s a priority. It will be easier to drop things because you are clear about what’s important.

Now you understand effort. Good. You are good to go?

Let’s see our checklist: time, priority, effort and start? No.

Are you ready to start? You have resources and people you need to start? Make sure that for every project you have two definitions:

• Definition of Ready: can we start, for real? If you are ready to start you will have things to discover but you will also have a clear vision of your first milestone. Make sure you know how to slice the problem and delivery value as soon as possible. Connect with reality and with people that will use your output. You want to have outcome. And you are not your user. You are not the problem you want to solve. Well, to your therapist you are, I know, but that’s not the case here.
  
• Definition of Done: it ain’t over til it’s over? That’s a song. You need a clear finish line. It will be a definition related to an amount of work/activities/tasks or it will be a definition of a metric, like we want X customers or Y revenue or Z profit.

I know effort is where the fun is, the discovery and new things that will come alive, but priority will make you clear to fly. And I know team and a place to make the best work possible is important. But without priority, you can lose everything, fighting for basic needs.

— Daniel Wildt

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