Everyone might know what the goal is?
But do they know what the priority is?
Goal – “We want to get this amazing release out the door to our customers.”
Priority – “We need to get these bugs done as soon as possible because we have to get this release out by X date.”
Goals are high-level, where you want to go, what you want to achieve. Priorities are the breakdown of the individual objectives that can achieve the goal.
You can’t have one without the other. But as a project progresses it becomes easier and easier for them to drift further apart.
The goal of the amazing release shifts to simply “getting it out the door.”
Fixing that last bug that would polish the release nicely is now pushed to a subsequent iteration.
Priority, the now, has taken a higher precedence to achieving the Goal, the real Goal of what you hoped to achieve when you started.
Take a look at what you are working on now – are you working for the sake of the priority today or the goal tomorrow?
