My IT department was driven by tactics and what we believed to be important. Adopting a system made our decisions more defensible and kept us focused on what mattered to the business. IT people are curious and love to solve problems, but working on a PowerShell script that’s low value may not be the best use of your time when user onboarding needs work. That’s the situation we were in at my previous employer: there was a disconnect from what was important.
The Priority Matrix was easy to adopt and was eye-opening. I’ve used it in private client engagements to justify where to allocate resources and why. There’s rarely been disagreements, because it’s an agreed upon system that solves the most pressing problems, accounting for who’s asking, costs, the commitment involved, and timing. It was foundational to my department and made me a better manager. You can read more about it here.
Have you implemented a Priority Matrix (or something like it) in your department? How did you make it happen and how did you ensure that your team members were all on-board?
