How can you prioritize software development projects when resources are limited?

How can you prioritize software development projects when resources are limited? This is a common challenge for software project managers, especially in agile environments where changes and uncertainties are frequent. In this article, you will learn some practical tips and tools to help you rank and select the most valuable and feasible projects for your team and stakeholders.

1 Understand your goals and criteria

Prioritizing software projects requires a clear vision of what you want to achieve and how you will measure success. Align your goals and criteria with your organization's strategy, values, and customer needs. Common criteria for prioritizing software projects include business value, customer satisfaction, technical feasibility, risk and uncertainty, and dependencies and synergies. Business value looks at how much revenue or profit the project might generate or protect. Customer satisfaction focuses on how much the project will improve the user experience, loyalty, or retention. Technical feasibility considers how easy or difficult it is to implement the project with the available skills, tools, and infrastructure. Risk and uncertainty evaluates how likely the project is to face technical, legal, or market challenges and what the consequences are. Lastly, dependencies and synergies examine how the project relates to other projects and how it will affect or benefit from them.

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Gaurav Prakash

Software Engineering Manager at Gartner
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It really is about prioritization. Try to answer the following - 1. What is it that I need first? 2. Factor in risk vs reward while prioritizing projects. 3. Weigh in ROI on the projects. 4. Is there some other project that could be deprioritized at the moment? If so, you could use those resources for the higher priority project. Everything is a priority in today's ecosystem. But it's all about identifying from a pool of projects, which one gets me closer to my goals as of TODAY.

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Dev Mhaiskar

Engagement Lead, Technical Program Manager, Agile Scrum Master
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Product Roadmap / Strategy should be considered. Prioritization is the key. ROI (Return on Investment), any legal obligations, organization directive/initiative are important deciding factors. Within a project, understand what features will constitute to the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and what will be non-MVP. Understands Risks of NOT doing something. Understand potential miss of GAIN of NOT doing something. Understand GAIN of doing something. Understand Team's abilities. Can we bring on additional resources ? Compare and weigh. Decide after collecting all such data.

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Nasirul Akbar Khan

Web Application | Web Automation | Process Automation | Browser Extension | JavaScript | PHP
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Managing limited resources is a challenge, and your methodical Evolutionary model tackles it well. Start with an MVP, simplify requirements, and list tasks in a workflow tool. Create a project roadmap, sort tasks by budget and time, prioritizing the quickest and least expensive. Execute tasks using the Kanban model, avoiding the backlog for the MVP. Post-MVP, delve into the backlog for refining and enhancing features based on ROI. This balanced approach ensures a functional start and continuous improvement.

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2 Use a prioritization framework

Once you have defined your goals and criteria, you need a systematic way to compare and rank your projects. There are various prioritization frameworks to choose from depending on the context and preferences. For example, the MoSCoW framework categorizes projects into four groups: Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won't have, enabling you to identify the essential, desirable, optional, and irrelevant projects for your team. The RICE framework scores projects based on Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort factors. The Kano framework classifies projects into five types: Basic, Performance, Excitement, Indifferent, and Reverse. Lastly, the WSJF framework stands for Weighted Shortest Job First and calculates the priority of projects based on their cost of delay and duration. All of these frameworks can help you optimize the return on investment and delivery speed of your projects.

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3 Involve your team and stakeholders

Prioritizing software projects is not a task to be undertaken alone. It requires the involvement of your team and stakeholders, as they bring different perspectives, insights, and expectations. You should communicate your goals and criteria clearly, solicit feedback and suggestions, and address any conflicts or disagreements. Surveys and polls can be used to collect data about preferences, opinions, and concerns. Workshops and meetings can be used to facilitate discussions and brainstorming. Additionally, voting and ranking can be used to validate, adjust, or finalize your prioritization decisions. Involving your team and stakeholders in the process will help you make informed decisions about project prioritization.

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Basant Kumar

Java EE Backend | Enterprise Distributed systems | Webservices | Python |FlexNet Operations (FNO) | Statistics | Lean Six Sigma | Microservices Certified | AWS Cloud Certified | Pega 5.0 Certified | Follow me for SOAP WS
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Prioritization IMHO is a relative term and depends on the industry type. For product industries, prioritization revolves around the key "having edge in the competitive market". Example, Microsoft, google, X etc. are currently prioritizing their resources to remain competitive in the AI-marketspace. For services industries, prioritization is rather a challenging subject. You have multiple clients who expects the deliverables within the budget and stipulated time. With limited resource power, a balanced prioritization is a required must. The key consideration in order of priority should be: a. longevity of the project. b. value-addition (i.e., learning curve) for the team. c. effort:benefit ratio d. available technical competencies.

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4 Review and update your priorities

Prioritizing software projects is not a one-time task. You should review and update your priorities regularly in order to account for any changes in your environment, requirements, and resources. To do this, set a review cycle, use metrics and indicators to measure performance, and apply the Pareto principle to identify the 20% of projects that deliver 80% of value. Additionally, you need to monitor your progress, evaluate your results, and incorporate new information and feedback into the prioritization process.

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5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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How can you prioritize software development projects when resources are limited?

1

2

3

4

5

1 Understand your goals and criteria

2 Use a prioritization framework

3 Involve your team and stakeholders

4 Review and update your priorities

5 Here’s what else to consider

Software Project Management

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How can you prioritize software development projects when resources are limited?

1

2

3

4

5

1 Understand your goals and criteria

2 Use a prioritization framework

3 Involve your team and stakeholders

4 Review and update your priorities

5 Here’s what else to consider

Software Project Management

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