An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management

by Will Larson

Although shifting from a discussion about velocity to one about prioritization is a good outcome, expressing your priorities convincingly can be a difficult, daunting task. I recommend breaking it down into three discrete steps: document all your incoming asks, develop guiding principles for how work is selected, and then share subsets of tasks you’ve selected based on those guiding principles. Hopefully, documenting your incoming asks is as straightforward as auditing your team’s tickets, but it’s pretty common for some of the most important asks to be undocumented. What I’ve found effective is to blend existing planning artifacts (typically quarterly/annual plans) and your tickets into a list, and then test it against your most important stakeholders. Keep asking those who routinely have dependencies on your team, “Does this seem like the right list of tasks?” The result will be a fairly accurate artifact.