Your question is Prioritize Projects Under Resource Constraints. Take a moment with it on the right.
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You are the Engineering Manager for a shared platform team supporting a commercial insurance business. Three initiatives are competing for the same small group of engineers: a compliance-driven policy administration update, a revenue-facing quote flow improvement, and a reliability fix for a recurring production issue that has already caused several support escalations. Leadership wants all three delivered this quarter, but the team can only realistically take on one major project and one smaller follow-up. The product, operations, and compliance leaders each believe their request should go first, and one of them has already escalated to the VP level.
| Detail | Value |
|---|---|
| Team size | 6 |
| Available engineers | 4 |
| Quarter length | 12 weeks |
| Major initiatives allowed | 1 |
| Follow-up initiatives allowed | 1 |
| Stakeholder groups | 3 |
| Escalation risk | High |
| Compliance deadline | End of quarter |
How do you decide which projects to prioritize when resources are limited?