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| <mainDescription><h3>
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| What is prioritized?
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| </h3>
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| <p>
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| Prioritization should happen for work items, such as enhancement requests,&nbsp;requirements, defects, project tasks, and so on.
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| The work items list provides one place for prioritizing work. Prioritizing units of work that are too small may lead to
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| analysis-paralysis.
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| </p>
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| <h3>
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| Who prioritizes?
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| </h3>
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| <p>
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| Prioritization is done by the extended team. Here are some examples on how different team members contribute to the
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| prioritization:
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| </p>
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| <ul>
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| <li>
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| Analysts&nbsp;collaborate with stakeholders to establish the initial priorities for work items to implement, such
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| as features, use cases, and scenarios.
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| </li>
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| <li>
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| Architects&nbsp;collaborate with stakeholders and the development team to identify the architecturally significant use
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| cases and scenarios, and re-prioritize these so that the team understands what needs to be done to drive down technical
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| risk, and&nbsp;to make progress&nbsp;on&nbsp;evolving the product in a technically sensible fashion.
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| </li>
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| <li>
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| Developers&nbsp;and&nbsp;testers help define&nbsp;(but do not decide) the priorities of defects relative to achieving
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| iteration objectives.
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| </li>
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| <li>
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| Project managers facilitate (but do not decide), driving convergence on what the team should focus on when planning a
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| project, planning an iteration, and managing an iteration. They do this in order to ensure smooth execution, and that the
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| perspectives of all team members are properly heard. When the team cannot gain consensus in a reasonable time, the
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| project manager has final say on the priority of work items that are too small to warrant the attention of the
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| paying stakeholders.
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| </li>
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| <li>
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| Stakeholders&nbsp;that pay for the application have the final say on what capabilities to prioritize.
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| </li>
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| </ul>
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| <h3>
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| When do you prioritize?
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| </h3>
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| <p>
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| When you&nbsp;enter a new work item in&nbsp;the Work Items List, give it an initial priority. Priorities are always
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| changing. The sections below describe what re-prioritization is done when you are planning a project,
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| planning an iteration,&nbsp;or managing an iteration.
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| </p>
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| <h4>
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| Prioritizing when planning a project
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| </h4>
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| <p>
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| During project planning,&nbsp;prioritize the key features, use cases, and scenarios. Also, potentially assign them
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| to&nbsp;iterations as a part of laying out the project plan, by defining at a high level what should be done when.
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| These priorities will be revised later on as iterations are planned.
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| </p>
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| <p>
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| When starting a project where an existing application will be enhanced,&nbsp;a Work Items List may exist from past
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| projects and usage of the application. If this is the case,&nbsp;go through the Work Items List to survey and
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| re-prioritize existing work items, so&nbsp;that the team understands what to focus on.
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| </p>
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| <h4>
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| Prioritizing when planning an iteration
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| </h4>
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| <p>
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| When planning what to deliver for an iteration,&nbsp;the team needs to balance what delivers immediate value to the
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| stakeholders with what risks need to be mitigated.The chosen balance should be reflected in the iteration objectives,
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| which then drive further prioritization and assignments of work items to the next iteration. This exercise should be
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| done by the entire team to reflect all of the key perspectives, such as technical ("doing task A before task B saves you
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| time"), managerial ("we do not have anybody that knows that legacy application until next iteration", or business
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| ("this scenario is more important than that scenario").
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| </p>
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| <h4>
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| Prioritizing when managing an iteration
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| </h4>
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| <p>
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| The recommendation is not to&nbsp;expand or change the scope of an iteration, because this will almost certainly lead to
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| scope creep, as well as potential confusion among the team on what to work on. As new features and enhancements are requested,
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| capture them in the Work Items List, but do not assign them to the current iteration.
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| </p>
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| <p>
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| During an iteration, you are developing and testing code. As you develop solution increments, you will find defects. In
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| most cases, you will directly fix trivial&nbsp;defects as you find them during development. Examples of such defects
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| are the many problems you find as you implement your code (for example, using a test-driven development approach or
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| doing your regular unit tests). In other cases, the defect should be captured as a work item. This allows it to be
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| prioritized, and potentially developed by somebody else or at a different time. If a defect needs to be addressed to
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| provide an iteration build of reasonable quality&nbsp;and that&nbsp;aligns with the&nbsp;iteration objectives,&nbsp;the
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| defect&nbsp;should be&nbsp;fixed&nbsp;during the current iteration. Note that this is not a creep or change of scope,
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| since it merely indicates that something needs to be fixed to deliver what&nbsp;the team&nbsp;already committed to.
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| </p>
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| <h3>
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| How do you prioritize?
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| </h3>
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| <p>
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| Prioritizing is the difficult balancing of frequently competing priorities. For more information on the art of
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| prioritizing, see for example [<a class="elementLinkWithUserText" href="./../../../core.tech.common.base/guidances/supportingmaterials/references.tech_6CCF393.html#COH05" guid="_9ToeIB83Edqsvps02rpOOg">COH05</a>].
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