3rd MoverI develop, therefore I am
Joergensen’s rule of thirds
How to decide what to do and what not to do in web development – or any other development... or in most issues in life for that matter. Might as well chew off a really large bite here!
This is not going to be a long treatise on the method and tools described. There will be no terse abstract or conclusion, and you will find no references to the literature or to other web sites. This is simply a method and a primitive scorecard-tool, which has helped me times over in small as well as large web projects.
The problem <
Problem: too many ideas and too few resources to go through with all of them. How do you choose?
You are typically dealing with a project with many stakeholders and lots of people with good ideas. My projects are web projects, mainly content management systems, but other more specialized projects have been at play.
The problem is that within a meeting or two the list of ideas is one hundred items long or longer, and ideas and suggestions are still coming in.
You are typically dealing with a project with many stakeholders and lots of people with good ideas. My projects are web projects, mainly content management systems, but other more specialized projects have been at play.
The problem is that within a meeting or two the list of ideas is one hundred items long or longer, and ideas and suggestions are still coming in.
The solution <
OK, let’s have it: You sort the list according to some simple criteria, divide it in thirds, discard the last third, put the second third on a nice-to-have-list and go through with the first third.
How’s that for simplicity?
Now, as we all know, life is not as simple as that, and sure enough all of someone’s ideas is going to wind up in the discard-third, while somebody else’s ideas are all in the top third. Yes, people’s pride is a big problem in project management...
Sometimes you will also see that some central or critical part of the project will be in the nice-to-have-third or even be discarded, which of course weakens the system a bit.
We can handle such incidents, and I will return to that.
How’s that for simplicity?
Now, as we all know, life is not as simple as that, and sure enough all of someone’s ideas is going to wind up in the discard-third, while somebody else’s ideas are all in the top third. Yes, people’s pride is a big problem in project management...
Sometimes you will also see that some central or critical part of the project will be in the nice-to-have-third or even be discarded, which of course weakens the system a bit.
We can handle such incidents, and I will return to that.
The group <
The group of people involved in this process should ideally be about five people. Three are just too few and ten are probably too many.
Each person should represent a group of stakeholders: Management, IT, marketing, communication, sales, whatever. Each person will defend the interests of his or her department, but more importantly bring the knowledge and experience from his or her field. This will help the rest of the group in understanding the needs of the other parties.
Each person should represent a group of stakeholders: Management, IT, marketing, communication, sales, whatever. Each person will defend the interests of his or her department, but more importantly bring the knowledge and experience from his or her field. This will help the rest of the group in understanding the needs of the other parties.
The list <
Let’s look at the sorting process and the criteria in particular first.
The first drill is to list all ideas with a few words in such a way that everybody knows what we’re dealing with. I always use a whiteboard for the purpose at first and let people just scatterbrain ideas at will. All ideas are welcome: the sound ones and the wild ones.
You can add crazy wishes as well as must-haves as you please. In most cases a lot of items are given already, so they just get listed.
We’re also trying to get things divided into lumps, which make sense. And we’re aiming for a feature list, not a process or concept list. So workflow management, newsletters, RSS and image editing make sense while Information Architecture, usability and web design doesn’t. The first are distinguishable features, which can be added or removed from the project, while the latter are methods or steps in development, which are in the project no matter what.
I then type all these items into my little spreadsheet in a random sequence.
The first drill is to list all ideas with a few words in such a way that everybody knows what we’re dealing with. I always use a whiteboard for the purpose at first and let people just scatterbrain ideas at will. All ideas are welcome: the sound ones and the wild ones.
You can add crazy wishes as well as must-haves as you please. In most cases a lot of items are given already, so they just get listed.
We’re also trying to get things divided into lumps, which make sense. And we’re aiming for a feature list, not a process or concept list. So workflow management, newsletters, RSS and image editing make sense while Information Architecture, usability and web design doesn’t. The first are distinguishable features, which can be added or removed from the project, while the latter are methods or steps in development, which are in the project no matter what.
I then type all these items into my little spreadsheet in a random sequence.
The criteria <
As you will see, the three columns right to the list item are supposed to contain each a number. There are three numbers: Priority, Development and Content. Let me explain each of them, even though their meaning might seem evident.
Priority: this is an expression for the importance of the item. The lower the number, the higher the priority. Zero means “must-be-there”, one means “very important” and so on up to six, which means “unimportant, negligible”.
Development: this number is an opportunity to describe the development effort and resources that will go into creating or including the feature. Again the range in zero to six, zero meaning “extremely easy”, one means “quite easy” and six means “extremely troublesome”. Easy and troublesome also means: inexpensive and expensive, simple and challenging or other adjectives you can think of that polarize the resource needs.
Content: the last number describes the work we will have filling content into the system – both before launch and after. In other words: how much effort and resources will it take to harvest and groom data, fill databases and check validity before launch and how much work will it be keeping the data up-to-date. A simple calculation module might score very low, while a daily news feature will score high. Zero means “no content or content is ready”, one means “little content, no future updating” and six means “nothing ready now, lots of maintenance”.
Priority: this is an expression for the importance of the item. The lower the number, the higher the priority. Zero means “must-be-there”, one means “very important” and so on up to six, which means “unimportant, negligible”.
Development: this number is an opportunity to describe the development effort and resources that will go into creating or including the feature. Again the range in zero to six, zero meaning “extremely easy”, one means “quite easy” and six means “extremely troublesome”. Easy and troublesome also means: inexpensive and expensive, simple and challenging or other adjectives you can think of that polarize the resource needs.
Content: the last number describes the work we will have filling content into the system – both before launch and after. In other words: how much effort and resources will it take to harvest and groom data, fill databases and check validity before launch and how much work will it be keeping the data up-to-date. A simple calculation module might score very low, while a daily news feature will score high. Zero means “no content or content is ready”, one means “little content, no future updating” and six means “nothing ready now, lots of maintenance”.
The decisions <
The next step is one, which is supposed to be done together with the people, who suggested the ideas in the first place.
You will now fill out the spreadsheet item for item, each time with numbers decided in consensus. Everybody gets a chance to argue for and against, and you then decide on a set of numbers. The one-to-six-scale is fine enough to offer a fair score. Usually agreement on a number can be reached quite easily.
You will now fill out the spreadsheet item for item, each time with numbers decided in consensus. Everybody gets a chance to argue for and against, and you then decide on a set of numbers. The one-to-six-scale is fine enough to offer a fair score. Usually agreement on a number can be reached quite easily.
The score <
When the card is filled out, you can sort it by clicking the sort buttons in top of the rows. The main sort order is by average, which is the final sorting order, but it can be quite enlightening to sort by the other criteria, and see what floats and what sinks.
Now comes the camel – the one someone will have to swallow. Count the number of items in the list and divide by three. Draw a line after each third and you have them:
1 – the things you will do
2 – the things you save for next round
3 – the ones that go to the elephant’s cemetery
In some instances there will be issues, which you think has to be there, which will wind up below the first third. Sure enough: you are allowed to move stuff. This is not a tool that forces. This is a tool that helps. Decisions, which you can make without the tool, are probably sensible anyway.
You can also decide that the middle third is up for discussion. This is the list of issues, which would all be quite nice to have, but may be beyond the budget or timeframe. Single issues can be moved. Feel free to do so.
Now comes the camel – the one someone will have to swallow. Count the number of items in the list and divide by three. Draw a line after each third and you have them:
1 – the things you will do
2 – the things you save for next round
3 – the ones that go to the elephant’s cemetery
In some instances there will be issues, which you think has to be there, which will wind up below the first third. Sure enough: you are allowed to move stuff. This is not a tool that forces. This is a tool that helps. Decisions, which you can make without the tool, are probably sensible anyway.
You can also decide that the middle third is up for discussion. This is the list of issues, which would all be quite nice to have, but may be beyond the budget or timeframe. Single issues can be moved. Feel free to do so.
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