# Prioritizing and Planning within Heroku Postgres

DevFeed: [Prioritizing and Planning within Heroku Postgres](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/prioritizing-and-planning-within-heroku-postgres-41130.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.craigkerstiens.com/2013/03/13/planning-and-prioritizing/>)

Author: Map

Published: 2013-03-13T20:55:56Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Craig Kerstiens](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/craig-kerstiens.md>)

Topics: [Heroku](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/heroku.md>), [Product Management](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/product-management.md>), [Heroku Postgres](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/heroku-postgres.md>), [Software Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/software-engineering.md>)

Tags: [heroku](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/heroku.md>), [heroku-postgres](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/heroku-postgres.md>), [management](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/management.md>), [plan](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/plan.md>), [product-management](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/product-management.md>), [software-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software-engineering.md>)

## AI overview

The article describes a prioritization and planning process developed by the Heroku Postgres team. It involves collecting ideas, organizing them in a backlog, assessing impact and difficulty on a grid, and creating a six-month plan that identifies priorities and intentionally deferred work.

## Source excerpt

Over a year ago I blogged about Heroku's approach to Teams and Tools. Since that time Heroku has grown from around 25 people to over 100, we've continued to iterate and find new tools that work for how we do things. For many of the product management and software engineering books I've read I've yet to find something that helps a team priorize in a fashion I that feels right. One process emerged nearly a year ago from within the Heroku Postgres team and is now followed by many others. Within a team this process is now commonly conducted each 6 months. Lets take a look at how this process looks It Starts with Ideas Hopefully having ideas of things to work on isn't a problem, if it is just go spend some time with customers - listen to their problems, see how they use the product, then come back and write down the ideas. For most teams this is simply an excercise of thinking back and writing it down. Some teams at Heroku have resorted to keeping running backlogs of things they'd like to do this. We do this by keeping a Trello board which columns for: New ideas Ponies Stallions Ponies and Stallions are things that would be great to do, however a sizeable amount of work must be done on them and we're not currently tackling them. Ponies are less sizeable and likely to get done not in coming weeks but perhaps in coming months up to a year. Stallions are great but large effort and may or may not get done but in the category of things we would like to be able to do. Once you've got your ideas whether in your head on a backlog we begin by writing them out typically on sticky notes or index cards. Laying it all out From here we create a simple grid: The grid has two axis. One is for impact the other for difficulty. At this point we aim to lay out every idea that we've already written down into a quadrant. Commonly this is done at team offsites where the team is free of distractions and able to devote appropriate time to it. Being able to accomplish this in one sitting with the