Prioritisation - Choosing what will be on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Red Button
Post categories: Inside ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Red Button
| 14:40 UK time, Monday, 27 April 2009
Every six months, in my role as Managing Editor of TV Platforms, I work through the process of prioritisation. Put simply, I work with the team here to prioritise the development projects for the following six months (or more if we know beyond that!)
Diagram: How TV Platforms interfaces with other ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ divisions
TV Platforms provide all of the technical development skills led by a team of producers and project managers and ably supported by testers and design (or user experience - UX).
Our lovely colleagues in the content divisions (Journalism who cover news, sport and regional content; Audio and Music for radio and music; and Vision for television programmes and childrens output) will commission projects based on their strategic objectives and then submit all of their preferred ideas to me. My role is more referee-like, as we try to balance everyone's desires.
Other parts of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ are also invited to tell us their ambitions, with submissions covering anything from helping the Distribution team with Digital Switch Over, to the TV Platforms team requesting technical pieces of work (such as migrating server software to updated versions.)
I work with the divisions to unify their strategies to benefit ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Red Button and help manage their expectations about what the team can deliver. Our main aim is to offer the audience the best experience and content available.
This last round there were over 40 development projects submitted for consideration - ranging from huge (for example, a new quiz) to those more maintenance focussed (a simple popup telling people they'll need to retune their TV due to transmitter changes.) It was just before this stage that I fled to a friend's wedding in New Zealand leaving the team here to review, rate and generally curse my good name!
On my return, we sat down with the content divisions to explain what we believe TV Platforms can deliver over the next six months. There is always a balance between managing scope, time and resource - and development scope nearly always outruns the time and people available to produce it!
Anyway after much horse-trading and lots of discussions, a roadmap is produced that outlines the next six months work and the team, who have been finishing off the previous six months projects, start grouping and focussing on delivering more first-class development products.
Next week, I'll be giving you a view on what we will be working on in the next six months - the result of our most recent prioritisation round.
John Denton is Managing Editor, TV Platforms Group
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