Do you change project priorities?

[AlvinaLa1]

We have project managers who will change project priorities based on how close we are to the deadline of the project (due tomorrow - Urgent; due in 3 months - low).

However, we aren't sure if that's the best way to use priorities. We also have a new field called tiers to indicate the importance/complexity of a project so priority really is more about indicating "timing."

Does your organization change project priority? Yes or no, why?

[skyehansen]

My take:

Workfront provided a priority field as "A value that can be assigned to a task, issue or a project to designate how important it is." (this quote is from their glossary at https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/workfront/using/basics/workfront-terminology-glossary#p--... )

Because this is a default field, it also generates certain reporting shortcuts, like the ability to sort by ascending/descending priority rather than alphabetically.

In general, I would like to think that importance (priority) isn't something that changes due to the deadline -- but I do understand if your org tends to work that way. Just know that for other orgs, it tends to work the other way: you're working on a project and need to drop it because "something more important" came up.

To take a concrete example, you could sort your projects by DUE DATE and then PRIORITY. If you have 10 projects all due next Friday, you'll be able to allocate resources based on which ones are more important, even though all are due on the same day. If someone sets the priority to "important" just BECAUSE they are all due on the same day, you lose the ability to make the finer definition. (you can make the similar distinction with task due dates -- sort your task due dates based on date and then project-priority) I'm also picturing the poor PM who has about 50 projects to adjust on a day to day basis. Just isn't sustainable.

Lastly: You now have a second field to measure importance+complexity, so... it's up to you what you want to use priority for. (If you asked me, I always think it's interesting that people merge importance and complexity. Can something not be urgent and easy?)

[Daniel_Clarke]

Hi @AlvinaLa1 - 

I would agree with @skyehansen that priority is typically more of a "project importance" dimension than a representation of "How close to deadline" as you reference. 

Project Condition is another default field that is used for that, and is also auto-calcuated so it saves the PM time from having to manually click something else. 

Another idea is to use a variety of custom statuses to indicate progress through the project alongside the task milestones for a better picture at a high level.

If neither of those are quite right, you could add an additional field to track the deadline / timeline. We often have a "due date condition" field that is calculated based on the due date selected on a project and upon request/project creation will flag if a project is due in <1 week (for example) and would thus prompt action... can be reported on separately / prompt additional actions via fusion / included in a "send report" to appropriate parties. Same could be done with all projects that have a deadline in X number of days if you are just trying to highlight those close to completion. 

Hope some of that adds color to how we've solved for this!

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi @AlvinaLa1,

Interesting question, and some great insights from @skyehansen and @Daniel_Clarke so far.

I'd like to offer a couple more thoughts:

• earlier this month, one of our Workfront clients decided that they'd like to start marking "Hot Jobs" using Priority to raise everyone's awareness...but were surprised to find that Priority is not among the fields they could reconfigure to show on the Project Header page via Layout Templates (whether bug, Future Relese, or As Designed), so instead co-opted the built in Condition that @Daniel_Clarke mentioned, reworded the existing values to be Hot Job, N/A, and Do Not Use, added it to the Project Header page via Layout Templates, and are now field testing the concept by manually tagging "Hot Job" (with a red dot) as they see fit, and eventually perhaps automating it, too
• Building on the idea of a custom Priority field, by design, Projects attached to Portfolios have a built-in ordinal ranking based upon their position within the Portfolio Optimizer, which can also then be used in a calculated parameter to further refine cross-portfolio rankings (e.g. IF(Portfolio A,100000,IF(Portfolio B,2000000),...) + Portfolio Ranking), and once an organization has committed to such Universal rankings (what I often call a Project Priority Indicator, or PPI), it puts them in a great position for filtering, sorting, or even using advanced automated resourcing techniques such as our Assign Resources or Resource Grid solutions

Regards,

Doug