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.
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.
🙂