Prioritizing Your Workload: Workload Assignment and Prioritization (WAP)

  Scheduling   Knowledge Shelf  

Are you organized? You won’t stay in business very long if you manage with chaos and confusion; you will only achieve costly, wasteful, and demoralizing tasks, which lead to failure. So, what kind of work should you do first to remain organized, regardless of the emotional pressures your business places on you? Not surprisingly, some people panic and scurry about frenetically whenever they must finish a task or project. So, what work is the most important, and what work should you delay or ignore altogether? These are some of the workload assignment and prioritization (WAP) questions project or program managers should ask themselves, consciously or unconsciously, every day, and sometimes every hour.

On the other hand, there are others who never ask themselves these questions, focusing instead on the most urgent work (i.e., the “firefighter:” “this has a short deadline,” or “the boss wants it NOW!”); doing whatever seems the most interesting at the moment (i.e., the “grinner:” “this looks fun and involves my strengths and interests”); or, unfortunately, whatever is the easiest (i.e., the “whittler:” “this will only take a few minutes to do and will give me a feeling and appearance of accomplishment and progress”). None of these types asks the basic WAP questions and, consequently, is…

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