How to designate "priority" levels in a database application "low" "normal" "high"?

Question

I'm working on a database-driven web application that must keep track of "tasks" that are assigned to users by management.

I was told that the tasks should be categorized by priority: "low", "normal", or "high". I told the manager who described the requirement this way that I am familiar with another application that keeps track of tasks for a completely separate system. Users designate tasks as priority "low", "normal", or "high". There are criteria for using all three, but in practice, no one ever designates his task as "low" priority. Effectively, there are only two priority levels.

In order to avoid this situation, what would be three words to describe three levels of priority that users would be comfortable using? I realize this question is a bit subjective.

My first idea was "normal", "high", and "urgent"; but the application also categorizes tasks by time until the deadline, so "urgent" might confuse users.

Answer 1

I think the only way this is possible is to limit the number of "high" and "normal" tasks that can be assigned to users. For example, a user can only have 2 "high" priority tasks, 5 "normal" priority tasks and an unlimited number of "low" priority tasks. That way, if a manager wants to give a user another "high" priority task, she needs to lower the priority of another task or assign it to someone else.

In my opinion, this solution (a) reflects reality pretty accurately, since if all my tasks are high priority then only a couple will still get done and (b) probably will not fly with the business.

:-)

Answer 2

I think that even if a person is multi-tasking, still, inevitably at any point in time, the person is just shuffling priorities like a single CPU processor.

Hence, I think that it may be more useful to just assign tasks a increasing number in terms of priority.

Priority 1 is what you are working on.

Priority 2 is next ...

and so on

That way it is always clear as to which task is being worked upon as the one with priority number = lowest from all the OPEN tasks assigned to a person is the most urgent one and so on....

The task management system should ensure the management of priorities automatically such that it updates the numerical values when existing tasks get closed etc to ensure that the actual numbers remain starting at 1 onwards and there is a facility for user to shuffle priorities around tasks.

Answer 3

Normal, High, and Exception.

• Normal is an everyday task.
• High is something that must be right.
• Exception is something that must be right right now, but will get looked at by management to see if it was really necessary.

The fear of wasting your supervisor's time is almost always enough - after one warning - to stop people from checking "Exception" unnecessarily.