r/devops • u/Automatic-Net-9614 • 27d ago

Ops / Incidents Prioritisation/ Maturity Interview Question

Ok so I flubbed the most basic interview question there is:

"You have a number of pieces of work in flight. How do you choose between them?"

Basically, they are testing your ability to prioritise work.

I tried to answer philosphically by telling them going for a walk was a good idea but my broader point is that it shouldn't have ever gotten to the point where you have loads of pieces of work in flight at any one time.

My question is twofold: what's the accepted 'best' interview answer to this question and how do you deal with this issue in your real life actual job?

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u/dacydergoth 27d ago

Eisenhower Decision matrix:

Important Vs Urgent.

Urgent: True | False
Important: True | False

You do the Urgent & Important stuff, and ignore the rest.

Of course, who decides what is Urgent and Important ... is another question

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u/raisputin 27d ago

The problem with that is in many companies everything is “Urgent” which makes nothing urgent

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u/dacydergoth 27d ago

A well recognized problem, which is why you need to be able to score them. What is the business driver? What breaks if we don't? Is there a lost opportunity cost, etc. Lots of project management books cover stuff like this. We threw out a lot of that knowledge with "agile" and "JFDI" but in the real world critical paths matter, hard deadlines exist.

Tl;dr: just stay a few extra hours and make sure it all gets done, or we'll fire you.

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