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Originally Posted by jbeatty
How often do you find yourself prioritizing requirements with users?
Is it just near the end of your gathering efforts? Do you do it throughout on a small scale?
What techniques and tools do you use?
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This approach works for me...
I always have at least two ideas of priority in my head. My personal priorities are known as my "worry stack". This is a set of index cards I carry around with me, one of which is blank. When I'm confronted with something new to worry about, a requirement in this case, I start to make a note on the blank card, explaining that I shall start to worry about it immediately before/after the next/previous worry. Thinking aloud, I may flip through the stack muttering about how urgent or otherwise my existing worries are relative to the new worry. This gives my informant the opportunity to suggest how urgent or important the new worry is. Naturally, they will often make the mistake of talking about its importance rather than its urgency, and its project priority rather than my personal priority...
You guessed it, the second idea of priority is the project priority, of which there may be several different types, corresponding to the currently planned deliverables, one of which is usually some kind of working system. Let's assume there is only one delivery date currently contemplated (although that's not a position I favour). This delivery has a stack representing its current contents (in practice, this is usually a list). Again, I very pointedly run up and down the stack deliberating on where to insert the new item, muttering the mantra: "...so that would go...round about...here, just after [X]?". Discussion may follow.
If more than one delivery is contemplated, you have a stack of stacks. I'm quite likely to ask outright when they were hoping for delivery. Otherwise, I may just run through the dates or sequence until signs of discomfort appear...
As a result, my informants are quite likely to suggest the relative priority of each new requirement. And when the prioritization really counts, we can begin our discussions by considering adjacent requirements.