What are the factors involved in prioritizing system development and implementation work?

Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
What to Avoid
Answer Example

This is an important question aimed at understanding how an IT business consultant views demand, value, and order of operations. This question is asked because the ability to formulate an intelligent strategy that properly prioritizes competing needs is imperative to success in this role.

Avoid answers that indicate that there is a clear-cut strategy involved in prioritizing technology initiatives. Business and technology projects experience high rates of change and require flexibility. A candidate that does not understand how to assess the unique opportunities and develop a custom strategy for each project will be overlooked in many cases.

"One of the first things I consider when prioritizing development or implementation work is the alignment of the proposed changes to the goals of the initiatives I am working on. Items that serve more than one goal or have a large impact with minimal effort move to the top of the list. Additionally, there is a technical order of operations that needs to be considered. For example, I cannot release an app to a customer that allows for data entry if there is no database to capture the data in.

I also allow for unforeseen changes in business needs or direction. Lastly, there may be bug fixes or technical debt features that need to be resolved in order to allow for the flow of work to continue through the system. The impact of those items must be weighed against the need for new functionality.

There are additional considerations such as stakeholder happiness, or customer support issue resolution, but the overarching deciding factor in determining how to move forward in any of these situations relies on understanding the value stream of the business and the impact any proposed changes would have."

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How to Answer: What are the factors involved in prioritizing system development and implementation work?

Advice and answer examples written specifically for an IT Business Consultant job interview.

27. What are the factors involved in prioritizing system development and implementation work?

Why the Interviewer Asks This Question

This is an important question aimed at understanding how an IT business consultant views demand, value, and order of operations. This question is asked because the ability to formulate an intelligent strategy that properly prioritizes competing needs is imperative to success in this role.

Written by Karrie Day on March 8th, 2022

What to Avoid

Avoid answers that indicate that there is a clear-cut strategy involved in prioritizing technology initiatives. Business and technology projects experience high rates of change and require flexibility. A candidate that does not understand how to assess the unique opportunities and develop a custom strategy for each project will be overlooked in many cases.

Written by Karrie Day on March 8th, 2022

Answer Example

"One of the first things I consider when prioritizing development or implementation work is the alignment of the proposed changes to the goals of the initiatives I am working on. Items that serve more than one goal or have a large impact with minimal effort move to the top of the list. Additionally, there is a technical order of operations that needs to be considered. For example, I cannot release an app to a customer that allows for data entry if there is no database to capture the data in.

I also allow for unforeseen changes in business needs or direction. Lastly, there may be bug fixes or technical debt features that need to be resolved in order to allow for the flow of work to continue through the system. The impact of those items must be weighed against the need for new functionality.

There are additional considerations such as stakeholder happiness, or customer support issue resolution, but the overarching deciding factor in determining how to move forward in any of these situations relies on understanding the value stream of the business and the impact any proposed changes would have."

Written by Karrie Day on March 8th, 2022

Next Question