How to Weigh and Track Your Project Priorities

Discover everything you need to know about how to weigh and track projects at work

November 14, 2022
Press the button to generate random icebreaker questions.
There are 300 more icebreaker questions at the bottom of the article
How would you describe your job to a five year old?
What season would you be?
What is a weird food you have tried? Would you eat it again?
What is your favorite holiday tradition?
Would you go in the mother-ship with aliens if they landed on Earth tomorrow?
What is your favorite season?
Do prefer working from home or the office?
What is your earliest memory of this job?
What is the best thing you have bought so far this year?
What is the earliest book you remember?
If you had to move to another country, which one would you choose?
You are the best criminal mastermind in the world. What crime would you commit if you knew you would get away with it?
What is your favorite movie genre to watch?
What was the last thing you ate?
What person from history would you add to Mount Rushmore?
What is a weird fact you know?
What is your favorite part of working from home?
Were the Spice Girls a good team?
Imagine you can instantly learn any language. Which would you choose?
If you could live in any state, which state would you pick?
Which fictional team is the best team of all time?
What did you want to be when you grew up?
What do you usually eat for a quick lunch?
What simple food will you never eat?
Show us the weirdest thing you have in the room with you right now.
Would you rather stay at a hotel or an AirBNB?
What is your favorite movie genre to watch?
Are you more productive in the morning or at night?
Who is someone in your community that makes a difference?
Who was your most unique pet?
Choose one famous person from history you want on your team during a zombie apocalypse.
What is a good way to give back to the community?
Which song could you listen to over and over again?
Is Hugh Grant funny?
What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast?
Would you want to have an imaginary friend today? Did you have one as a child?
What actor or actress would you want to play you in the movie about your life?
What is the best super power?
What is your New Years resolution?
You can only eat one food again for the rest of your life. What is it?
What is the best work holiday?
What is the first gift you remember receiving?
Would you rather join Metallica or Backstreet Boys?
What is the best example of a community you have seen?
What is an easy way to do something nice for someone?
Show us your phone background and tell the story behind why you picked this image.
What was your first job?
Pick any band to play at your funeral.
If you could have an unlimited supply of one thing for the rest of your life, what would you pick?
Which superpower would you give to your arch enemy?
What is the most obscure superpower you would want?
What emoji best describes how you are feeling right now?
If you could live in any country, which country would you pick?
Would you rather live in a city or a town?
What is your favorite holiday?
What is something you accomplished as part of a team?
What is your standard office lunch?
What is your most used phone app?
What is your favorite season?
Have you ever won something as a team?
Imagine you are a professional baseball player. What is your introduction song?
Beach holiday or ski trip?
Have you ever been to a funny comedy show?
Would you rather live at the North Pole or the South Pole?
What is your favorite song to sing?
If you could live in any state, which state would you pick?
Imagine you could teleport anywhere. Where would you go right now?
What is the most unusual job you have heard of?
What was the last thing you ate?
You can visit any fictional time or place. Which would you pick?
What do your family and friends think you do all day?
What movie do you wish you could watch again for the first time?
Show us your most-used emoji.
What was the most unique style or fashion trend you ever embraced?
What movie defined your generation?
You are stranded on a remote desert island. Are you alone or with your worst enemy?
What is your favorite knock-knock joke?
Have you ever told someone Santa is not real?
Do you know how to speak more than one language?
On a scale of 1 – 10, how much of a team player are you?
What is your #1 recommendation in this city?
What is your favorite holiday?
What bucket list item do you most want to check off in the next six months?
What is your favorite mythical creature?
What was the first way you made money?
If you could be great at any Olympic sport, which would it be?
Which song could you listen to over and over again?
When did you start liking/hating mushrooms?
Where is your favorite vacation spot?
Do you take your PTO all at one time, or another way?
Which show do you remember most from your childhood?
Which beverage goes best with pizza?
Would you want to have a personal assistant follow you around everywhere and do what you asked of them?
Have you ever met your idol?
What did you want to be when you grew up?
Would you rather live 100 years in the past or 100 years in the future?
What is your hobby?
When you are alone in the car, what volume is the music at?
Imagine you no longer have to work. How would you spend a Tuesday?
What is your favorite type of sandwich?

Most projects fail. 

In fact, a measly 2.5% of businesses complete all of their projects successfully.

And a big reason is that most organizations don’t know how to prioritize projects properly – or track their progress once they’re underway.

Here’s everything you need to know about how to weigh and track projects at work – as well as roll with the punches when priorities change. 

What are a project’s priorities?

In most organizations, a project’s priorities change depending on who you ask.

But the most effective businesses have mastered the art of putting personal agendas aside and focusing on what’s going to get the project over the line on time and within budget.

They do this by understanding that every project has three elements: cost, time, and scope.

And that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you’re going to need to compromise on at least one of these elements.

Here’s the thing: 

  • If your project has a hard deadline, you’re probably going to need to bring in freelancers – or reduce the scope to get it over the line.
  • If your project has a strict budget, you should plan for having to shrink its scope – or accept it’s going to take as long as it takes with the manpower you have to hand.
  • If you’ve got no wiggle-room when it comes to the features you’re going to need to ship, you might have to throw more money at the problem – or extend the deadline.

Leaders that get things done do one thing differently: they agree on which of these three elements are negotiable – and which are the priorities – before a project begins.

So, the first thing you need to do before you launch any project is get clear on where you have wiggle room when it inevitably doesn’t go to plan.

Of course, keep Parkinson's law – the adage that work expands to fill whatever time you allot for it – in mind here. If your team knows a project’s “real” deadline is a month after the one they’re working towards… don’t be surprised when the project ends up being shipped a month “late”.

While stakeholders need to agree on what levers can be pulled if the project goes off track, project managers need to set out as if all three elements are non-negotiable to have the best chances of wrapping things up on time and within budget.

Book a demo of Assembly to streamline weighing and tracking your organization’s projects.

How do you assess project priority?

One of the most effective techniques for prioritizing projects comes from an unusual source: a former U.S. president.

The Eisenhower matrix – named after Dwight D. Eisenhower, a five-star General who served as both the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War II and the 34th President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 – is a simple way to balance priorities.

And it works so well because it’s so intuitive.

Here’s how it works:

The Eisenhower MatrixCC BY-SA 4.0
  1. Write out a numbered list of all your projects.
  2. Draw an Eisenhower matrix (like the example above).
  3. Plot each task on the simple matrix based on how urgent and important it is.

And that’s it! 

You can use an Eisenhower matrix to quickly weigh up:

  • Which projects you should be prioritizing as an organization.
  • Which tasks you should be prioritizing within each project. 
  • Which to-dos your reports should be prioritizing this week.

Book a demo of Assembly to make it easy for your teams to quickly and easily create their own Eisenhower matrixes.

What are the four levels of prioritizing tasks?

Once you’ve plotted them on your Eisenhower matrix, you’ll be able to see at a glance which projects your team should be focusing their time and attention on.

The next step is to break your projects down into the four levels of prioritization to understand your next steps. These are determined by which quadrant of your Eisenhower matrix they sit in:

Urgent and important

These projects need to be at the very top of your to-do list. Make it a priority to get them done, and don’t spend time on other tasks until they are.

Important but not urgent

These are the things that most organizations overlook. But you’ll have a good chance of overtaking your competition if you can give them the time and attention they deserve. 

Urgent but not important

Most businesses spend far too much time on projects that fall into this quadrant. These feel important because they’re time sensitive – but when you analyze it, they’re not actually going to get your business any closer to bringing its vision to life. The most successful leaders learn to recognise when a project isn’t truly important and push it to the bottom of their team’s list of priorities.  

Not urgent or important

It’s amazing how many tasks that regularly occupy space on your teammates' to-do lists fall into this quadrant of an Eisenhower matrix. A survey revealed that more than 54% of workers spend most of their time on tedious tasks that require no creativity and could be handled by a less expensive resource. Let running through this exercise be a wake-up call and add those tasks to a “do not do” list, instead. 

Cost, time, and scope

Remember the three elements every project has from above? Cost, time, and scope all come into play here as well. The most effective teams are a lot more open to increasing the budget or extending the timeline of an important project than one that’s fallen in the third or fourth priority tier. Fail to make this distinction yourself and you could run into trouble.

How do you keep track of priorities?

Getting to grips with how much of a priority each project should be with an Eisenhower matrix is the first step to working more effectively.

Of course, businesses aren’t static. How “urgent” and “important” each project on your plate can change overnight. Your list of priorities therefore isn’t worth the pixels it’s taking up on your screen if it can’t shift when things change. 

Luckily, Assembly can help you navigate changes as effectively as possible:

  • Employee surveys empower your people with the tools they need to feed back on things that might affect how you weigh your priorities. 
  • The group feed and executive updates make it easy to keep your people in the loop around shifting priorities. 
  • Workflows can quickly be amended to reflect the ever-changing situation.

Whatever project management system you adopt, it needs to be flexible. The easier it is to change when priorities shift, the faster your team will be back on track and firing on all cylinders to achieve your company's goals.

Try Assembly to make keeping your organization on the same page about your shift priorities as easy as possible.

The final word

Learn how to focus your team’s time and attention on the right projects – and make sure they’re on track every step of the way – and you’ll make a huge difference on your business’s bottom line.

Use the tips and tools we’ve outlined here to make sure you and your team are always working on the projects that deserve to be top priority.

Browse our Free Employee Recognition Guide

Get the foundational knowledge on creating an employee recognition program that boosts employee engagement and helps them feel valued.

Explore Guide
Employee recognition guide