The unreasonable effectiveness of stack ranking

Stakeholders are silly people. TRAGEDY OF TRAGEDIES THE BUTTON IS 3px WRONG! Huh it kinda sucks that people get stuck in this checkout flow sometimes OMG I CLICKED A BUTTON AND THE PAGE DID SOMETHING FUNNY btw sometimes I can't do my work for like 2 hours but then it's fine.

How do you cut through the noise and work on what matters? Stack ranking.

We tried this with two groups of stakeholders last week and it was super effective. Even got people thanking me these were the most effective check-in meetings they've had.

Here's how it works:

  1. Put all your ideas in a backlog
  2. Get everyone who cares together in a room
  3. Start sorting

You'll need something that lets you drag things around and preserves the order for all to see. We used Linear, I'm liking it so far. Whiteboards with post-it notes can work.

Your goal is to make it tangibly obvious that moving things up pushes other things down. Everyone will hate this and visibly squirm. It's going to hurt, but you'll get your priorities.

Here's the thing [name|]: You can't work on everything all at once. Work in Progress kills your progress. But you can work on the most impactful things first. Make sure at least those get done.

As long as you're always working on the next most impactful, most important, or highest leverage activity, that's all that matters. The rest can wait.

And I love seeing stakeholders go "Wait no no no come on I know I complained endlessly when that button annoyed me but surely you're gonna focus on the actual business priority first!?"

😉

~Swizec

PS: make sure to include engineering work in that backlog and prioritize alongside all the rest. Sharpening the axe is a high leverage activity. Just don't get stuck shaving yaks

PS2: these meetings are most effective when everyone from an empowered team works together with their stakeholders (workstream). Don't mix the streams