Today's Focus

🎯 Prioritization Rules

Critical — Do Now

• Production incident actively impacting users or revenue
• Deadline is today AND business consequence if missed
• Explicit directive from CTO/CEO with same-day expectation
• Security vulnerability in live systems
• Blocking an entire team from working

High — Today / This Sprint

• Deadline within 48 hours
• Dependency for another team or project
• Stakeholder commitment confirmed in writing
• Escalation risk if not addressed soon

Medium — Plan This Week

• Deadline within the sprint/week
• Contributes to OKR but not immediately critical
• Improves reliability, performance, or team efficiency

Low — Backlog / Opportunistic

• Nice to have, no firm deadline
• Technical debt without near-term consequence
• Administrative or process improvements

🚦 Status & RAG Rules

Project RAG

• Green — On track, no material risk to delivery
• Amber — At risk; mitigation plan exists but uncertain
• Red — Off track; escalation required

Task Statuses

• Not Started — Queued, not yet worked
• In Progress — Active work underway this sprint
• Waiting — Awaiting review, approval, or response
• Blocked — Cannot proceed; explicit blocker identified
• Complete — Definition of completion met

Forecast Accuracy

• Target: ±20% variance on task estimates
• Persistent underestimation → re-calibrate T-shirt sizing
• Persistent overestimation → tasks being de-scoped mid-sprint

🔀 Defer · Delegate · Escalate · Re-scope

Defer when

• Priority dropped below High and sprint is already full
• Dependency is unresolved with no unblock date
• Context switch cost exceeds the value of doing it now
• Work is blocked by a third party with no ETA

Delegate when

• Work doesn't require TL decision-making authority
• A team member has capacity and the skill
• Delegating builds capability in the team
• TL is the bottleneck on more than 3 tasks simultaneously

Escalate when

• Scope has grown beyond original estimate by 50%+
• Two Critical tasks with conflicting deadlines exist
• A blocker persists beyond 24 hours with no resolution path
• Delivery commitment to a Business Owner is at risk

Re-scope when

• Original estimate was <50% accurate after work begins
• MVP can satisfy stakeholder need at lower effort
• Technical approach discovered to be unviable
• Business requirement has changed mid-delivery

🛠 Tool Implementation Guide