# Running a P1, P2, P3 Team Prioritization Meeting

DevFeed: [Running a P1, P2, P3 Team Prioritization Meeting](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/running-a-p1-p2-p3-team-prioritization-meeting-28196.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<http://fuzzyblog.io/blog/management/2019/10/31/how-to-set-priorities-in-a-team-meeting.html>)

Author: Fuzzygroup

Published: 2019-10-31T00:00:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Scott Johnson](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/scott-johnson.md>)

Topics: [Process](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/process.md>), [To-Do](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/todo.md>)

Tags: [management](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/management.md>), [meetings](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/meetings.md>), [offsite](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/offsite.md>), [process](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/process.md>), [startup](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/startup.md>), [tasks](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/tasks.md>), [team](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/team.md>), [time](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/time.md>)

## AI overview

This article describes a team prioritization meeting that classifies work as P1, P2, or P3. The team lists its tasks, assigns priority levels, and limits the number of top-level P1 priorities to roughly one per person or fewer.

## Source excerpt

Really is anything more scary than prioritization???; Picture taken at Pete's Dueling Piano Bar, Austin, TX; Recommended I am a member of an 8 person team that is: part of a non profit distributed all over the country trying to get started on a new initiative and find our footing; we are about 1 year old (I've only been here for 2 months) just had our first offsite juggling way too much work hence the need to prioritize At the offsite I witnessed a fascinating exercises in setting priorities that my boss, Dave Sifry, orchestrated. I haven't seen prioritization done quite this way in the past so I wanted to write down how this was done. I also made one important contribution during the process Step 1 - Terms There are three types of priorities: P1 - something that you have to do the instant it comes up; drop everything and worry about it P2 - something that you can do on the second day P3 - something that can wait 3 days Step 2 - List What You Do This was a simple process: Put all people in the same room with a shared note space (white board or easel size post it ) Designate a person to write all the things that you do Time bound the exercise to say 20 minutes and try and make sure that each person's tasks are listed Pro Tip 1: Make sure that the person listing the priorities on the white board / easel size post it has decent hand writing. Our initial writer was close to illegible so we had to rewrite them all. Pro Tip 2: Use a different color pen for each person's tasks Step 3 - Apply the Priorities You then go through the tasks and write down P1, P2, P3 next to each task. Inherently you are going to err on the side of P1 which brings us to My Contribution. My Contribution My contribution to this process was actually pretty simple. I asked this question: How many top level, P1, priorities can a team our size support? My boss had a brilliant answer - "maybe one per person, possibly less". I really wasn't trying to be a jerk; just trying to apply my normal engineering