Effectively Visualizing Workload and Priority

Ever heard phrases in your office such as this and feel a sense of dread? "Give that to so and so, they can handle it..." With so much on your plate already, how are you supposed to get this done?

You are not an infinite resource, visualize with data the priorities and workload on your plate for others to see and understand.

Kanban

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The answer can be this simple, granted it does not tell the whole story.

Define columns which have meaning to your business process. This will effectively show where tasks are in your pipeline as people already understand how you operate. Having too many columns might make it too much work to move items around, so a simple basic set should be good enough. You can start with: Backlog, Planned, In Progress, and Blocked, these show all steps in the process.

Rank items to show importance. Arrange items in a fashion where you work from top down in terms of priority. This lets others know when you will be getting to those tasks. In the long run this will also make your days easier, as you just need to go to your board when you are done with the current task and move to the next one.

Keep your board up to date. Keeping your Kanban up to date shows coworkers you are organized and they can always see what it is you are currently working on. This tells them you are accountable and communicate the workload you are doing. When it comes to priority tasks, best practice is to be overly communicative about progress being made to keep everyone at ease.

Review your board when you start work each day. This helps you to familiarize yourself with what is in your pipeline so you are ready. Also you might notice developments in the last day might have changed the priority of other issues.

Tie items on your board to larger goals / objectives. When creating new tasks for yourself, ensure you link to higher level things the company is working towards. This will help show others why you are working on these units of work currently.

Responding to New Work Requests / Priorities

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Prepared with your new toolkit, you are now able to more effectively respond to new work requests.

Share your current priority list with anyone who makes a request. The next time someone asks you to complete something right away, you might respond with: I am feeling pretty overwhelmed right now, lets review my priorities for the day and ensure what you have asked me to do is indeed higher priority or we need to look at alternate resourcing. You might find when people can visually see what you are talking about with data to back up why you are working other priorities, they might make fewer requests like this.

Show others where they fit in your priorities and timeline. When people request new tasks of you in the future, it might be best to ask for an ETA and reason for their priority. With this information you can then plan out the task, add it to your board and show them where they fit into your priorities and timeline. This gives them the confidence their request will not be lost or forgotten.

Verify alignment with company goals. When new work requests come in, ensure they are also in agreement with weekly / quarterly / annual goals. If you are working towards a higher priority company goal, you can respond you will work the tasks in order of what is more important in the big picture.

Time sensitive requests. These can be difficult to get around as while they may not be as important as other things you are working on, they are units of work which must get completed by a certain date or the company may face some consequence. Do your best to automate this kind of work or effectively document so the people making the request are empowered to do this work themselves.