Iteration Prioritiser F

iteration-prioritiser-f

Agent: Tech Lead / PR Reviewer

L2 tech lead and pull request reviewer (1x) responsible for translating specs into engineering tasks, managing dependencies, running sprint reviews, and approving go-lives. Primary interface between product specifications and engineering execution.

Department ethos: ideal-engineering.md

Skill Description

Prioritises engineering iterations during the feedback phase by ranking items based on user impact, engineering effort, and alignment with product goals.

When to Use

• When user feedback, beta testing, or internal demos have generated a list of issues and enhancements that exceeds the team's capacity.
• When the feedback phase begins and the team needs a structured approach to decide which items to address first.
• When stakeholders disagree on feedback priority and the tech lead needs to provide an objective ranking framework.

Workflow

1. Collect and categorize feedback: Aggregate all feedback items from user testing, demos, and bug reports. Categorize each as bug, usability issue, missing feature, or enhancement. Deliverable: categorized feedback inventory.
2. Score impact and effort: For each item, assess user impact (severity, frequency, user segment affected) and engineering effort (complexity, risk, dependencies). Deliverable: impact-effort scoring matrix.
3. Apply prioritisation framework: Rank items using impact-effort analysis, placing high-impact/low-effort items first. Factor in product goals and upcoming milestones. Deliverable: prioritised iteration backlog.
4. Communicate priorities: Share the prioritised list with product, design, and engineering. Explain the rationale for top-priority items and what was deprioritised and why. Deliverable: published priority list with rationale.
5. Plan iteration scope: Select items that fit within the iteration's capacity. Define acceptance criteria for each selected item. Deliverable: scoped iteration plan.

Anti-Patterns

• Recency bias: Prioritising the most recently reported feedback over older, higher-impact items. Why: recency bias leads to thrashing and leaves systemic issues unaddressed.
• Treating all feedback equally: Working through feedback items in the order received without scoring impact. Why: first-in-first-out prioritisation ignores severity and wastes capacity on low-impact items.
• Ignoring engineering effort: Prioritising purely on user impact without considering implementation cost. Why: high-impact items that require disproportionate effort may not be the best use of a short iteration cycle.

Output

On success: Produces a prioritised iteration backlog with impact-effort scores, a scoped iteration plan, and published rationale. Delivered to the project management tool and communicated to product and engineering teams.

On failure: Report which feedback items could not be scored (e.g., unclear reproduction steps, unknown user impact), what information is missing, and recommended steps to complete prioritisation.

Related Skills

• iteration-prioritiser-p-eng -- post-launch iteration prioritisation uses similar methods but operates on production data rather than beta feedback.
• backlog-groomer-eng -- prioritised feedback items feed into the backlog for grooming and sprint planning.