Priority Setting

Priority Setting

Agenda Purpose and Value of Priority Setting Criteria for Priority Setting Quadrants Method Must Do, Should Do, Nice to Do Grid Analysis Dotmocracy Paired Comparisons Wrap Up and Questions

Why do we need to set priorities?

Purpose of Priority Setting • If something is a priority it is the most important thing you have to do or deal with, or that you must address first before all other things • According to the Pareto Principle, 20% of your activities will account for 80% of your success. Therefore it is important to ensure you know which 20% to focus on

Value of Priority Setting • It is the key to getting organized and making the most of your time and resources • Helps you to respond to community needs • Provides direction, which leads to the achievement of goals

Research notes that effectiveness declines with the growth in the organization’s priority list (Tip: Keep your priority list focused) • Requires the development of a process that enables you to deploy your time and energy most effectively and deal with the most critical problems (criteria)

Criteria for Priority Setting • Priority setting also involves the establishment of criteria, allowing choices to be made between competing priorities • Criteria are needed to balance the needs of different stakeholders

On a small project, the stakeholders can probably agree on requirement priorities informally • Larger, or more complex projects, need a more structured approach, which removes some of the emotion, politics, and guesswork from prioritization

Quadrants Method – Stephen Covey • Tasks are categorized by four quadrants: • Dr. Covey notes that highly effective people make time for the QII activities, and that doing so can reduce the time spent in other quadrants • While QI - QIV prioritization doesn't help you decide which activity to do first and which to do second, and so on, it can be very enlightening to find out which quadrants your tasks are in

Urgent/Important Matrix Human nature means that we instinctively act on tasks that are ‘urgent’, whether these tasks are important or not.

Urgent/Important Matrix

Quadrant Analysis • Can also use this quadrant when you have two clear criteria upon which to make a decision (for example, effort and impact), and those two criteria can be qualified in a dichotomous way (for example, high versus low)

Must Do, Should Do, Nice to Do • Priority 1: Must Do – these goals or activities must be achieved if you are to consider yourself ‘successful’. These are your highest priority goals or activities • Priority 2: Should Do – these goals or activities should be achieved (but it is not essential) to consider yourself ‘successful’ • Priority 3: Nice to Do – these goals or activities are not necessary to consider you or the work of your group ‘successful’

Grid Analysis • Grid analysis is useful when you might have to defend your program decisions with ample evidence. Also known as a decision matrix analysis, and MAUT (Multi-attribute utility theory), it is suitable when you have many different criteria to consider • Grid analysis takes more time and requires a more sophisticated audience with adequate time available to complete a detailed, thoughtful ranking process

Identify the criteria • The choices are limitless, but keep to a reasonable number, ideally choosing less than 10 criteria • For example, appropriateness may include: fit with mandate, fit with desires of funder, and fit with desires of stakeholders. Impact might include number reached and expected degree of change. Under capacity you could include both skills available and financial cost

Identify your scale -Identify how you will rate your options against the criteria. You might choose a 1 – 3 scale of low, medium or high. You might choose a 1 – 4 scale of excellent, very good, good or poor 3. Optional – Choose Weights - Weighting is an optional step that involves determining whether some criteria are more important than others. A criterion that is very low in importance gets a weight of 1. Something very important gets a 5

Set up your grid - Place your options on the rows, criteria in the columns and weights in the first row (if you choose to use weighting). Write your scale down across the top of the grid

Dotmocracy • Provide participants with one to three dots (usually stickers) and invite them to place a dot beside their top one to three options. It is a voting technique • Dotmocracy works well with large groups (e.g., 20 – 30 participants), in situations when a quick ‘read’ of the group feelings are required and when participants are not very interested or able to engage in very rigorous, analytical ranking processes

1. Establish voting criteria. Give stakeholders a common direction on which to base their opinions, such as urgency, importance, reach, impact, etc. For example, if urgency is a criterion, ask participants to place a dot beside the issue most urgently in need of addressing. 2. Establish the voting scale Give stakeholders an explanation about what the dot(s) mean. For example, if you have more than one dot colour, you might tell participants to put red dots on the items they don’t support, green dots on the items they strongly support and no dot on the items they are neutral about.

3. Establish the voting process/rules Give stakeholders direction about how many dots they will get and what they are allowed, or not allowed, to do with them. This includes whether or not they can put more than one dot on an item, if there is a time limit, or if they have to use all their dots. For example, you might tell participants they can only use two green dots (for those items they strongly support) but as many red dots (for items they don’t support) as they want. Clarify how the decision will be made, after the dots are posted.

Paired Comparisons • Paired comparisons work well when there is one criterion (for example, overall ‘importance’) and a rigorous, analytical ranking process is not suitable • It is most appropriate for a small or mid-sized group (generally up to 10 or 15 people)

It is a great tool to use after options have been narrowed down to three or four choices that need to be further narrowed • Paired comparisons have a higher degree of rigour because it forces people to quantify comparisons and get past their initial ‘gut reaction.’ It is still however, a fairly subjective voting process

List the options. Assign a letter to each Mark the options as row and column headings on the table. Block out the cells where you will compare an option with itself, and where you will duplicate a comparison

Paired Comparisons 3. Establish criteria and process rules • Decide on the critical factor/s you will use to compare options (for example, importance, urgency, reach, impact), and agree on how the final decision will be made 4. Compare the option in each row to the option in each column. Based upon the criteria you chose: • Identify which of the two options ‘wins’ • Score the difference between the two options on a scale of 0 to 3. A score of zero means no difference and three is a major difference. Beside the letter of the winner write down that score

Paired Comparisons • Add up the totals for each option • A = 2 • B = 0 • C = 3 • D =7 • In this case ‘D’ is the favoured choice.

Reflection • What learnings and reflections do I have from this session? • What are some potential actions for my Regional Network?

Wrap Up and Questions

References • Forest, Laverne and Mulcahy, Sheila, Priority Setting in Extension, retrieved from http://www.uwex.edu/ces/pdande/learning/pdf/ftf.pdf • Jain, Ankur, Applying Criteria-Based Matrix to Prioritize IT Projects, retrieved from www.isixsigma.com/.../applying-criteria-based-matrix-prioritiz • The Ontario Health Promotion E-Bulletin, 05 March 2010 - OHPE Bulletin 651, Volume 2010, No. 652 retrieved from http://www.ohpe.ca/node/11169 • Wiegers, Karl E. Wiegers, First Things First: Prioritizing Requirements, retrieved from www.processimpact.com/articles/prioritizing.html • www.achieve-goal-setting-success.com/set-priorities.html

Priority Setting