Collective Wisdom from the Experts 159
Important and Urgent activities (#1) generally must be handled as they occur.
However, you should work to install systems (risk prevention) that address
the cause of these events. For example, if bugs are causing a system to fail in
production, you should analyze the cause of these bugs and institute quality
controls to prevent them from occurring again. The best way to reduce the
important and urgent events is to institute feedback loops that address the root
cause of these occurrences.
The Important, but Not Urgent activities (#2) are the most important things
you can do in your job. This is where you do knowledge work and produce
value. If you did 25% more of these activities, your boss would give you a raise.
As a software project manager, you are in a unique position to focus the work
of your entire team on the Important, but Not Urgent activities. Your job is to
buffer your team from meaningless tasks (#4) and Urgent, but Not Important,
requests from other teams (#3). You, as the manager, have the power to say no
to these requests. Do them yourself, hire a lackey to do them, or just say no!
Your team can’t ignore Important and Urgent activities (#1), but if your team
spends all its time fighting fires, then you need to fix the faulty wires causing
those fires (#2). You might not see the benefits immediately, but over time your
team will spend more and more time doing the Important, but Not Urgent,
activities that make or break a project.