Which One to Move First
How to order a list of priced constraints, the three criteria that matter, and why the most expensive one is usually the wrong place to start.
Once a handful of constraints have been priced, the question is which to attempt first, and the answer is rarely the most expensive one. The expensive constraints are expensive partly because they are hard to move, and starting there is how these exercises die.
The test in “Which One to Move First” needs an unchanged baseline and a trustworthy record of what happened after the change. Teams exploring open this Monitask implementation guide for tips to increase productivity can strengthen that comparison while preserving corrections, exceptions and the decision owner’s explanation.
Three criteria, applied in order, produce a workable sequence in about ten minutes.
The assumptions behind “Which One to Move First” can also be checked against ILO working-time research. Record what applies locally and what requires qualified advice.
First criterion: who has to agree
Count the people whose agreement is required. One person is a conversation. A team is a consultation. An external party is a project with a lead time.
Start with the ones requiring one person or nobody. They are not the biggest prizes and they are the ones that will actually happen this quarter.
Second criterion: reversibility
Can it be put back if it does not work? A trial of a staggered break can be reversed next week. A change to contracted hours cannot.
Reversible changes can be tested rather than decided, which removes most of the risk from the conversation and most of the objections with it.
Third criterion: price
Only now. Among the constraints that need few agreements and can be reversed, do the expensive ones first.
Putting price third feels wrong and is right. A cheap constraint removed this month is worth more than an expensive one discussed for a year.
The sequence this produces
Typically: a physical object or a timing convention first, then a system setting, then an inherited number, then a skills constraint via training, and only then anything involving contracts or external parties.
- A physical object or a timing convention.
- A system setting.
- An inherited number with no source.
- A skills constraint, via training.
- Anything involving contracts or an external party.
That order also happens to run from least to most contentious, which means each step builds the credibility needed for the next.
The exception worth making
A constraint that is about to get worse on a known date — an expiry, a retirement, a contract ending — jumps the queue regardless of where the criteria put it.
Deadlines are the only reliable organising force in this work, and a constraint with one attached should be taken while the deadline is still far enough away to matter.
What not to start with
Anything involving an individual's personal arrangement, anything where the saving is a post, and anything that has been argued about before.
All three can be addressed, and none of them should be the first thing this exercise is used for. Starting there makes the register a cost-cutting instrument in everybody's mind, and it will never be honest again.
Doing one at a time
The discipline that makes the whole thing work. One constraint, one change, one measurement, then the next.
Changing three things at once is faster and produces an outcome nobody can attribute. When the rota improves, nobody knows why; when it does not, everything gets reversed including whatever was working.
How long each takes
A physical constraint: a quarter, mostly waiting for a purchase. A convention: one cycle. A system setting: a week to a quarter, depending on who holds the keys. A skills constraint: a quarter to train, another to see the effect.
That is a year for four constraints, which sounds slow and is faster than the alternative, which is nothing for five years followed by a redesign.
Keeping the list visible
The ordered list, with prices and status, on one page, reviewed quarterly. Three columns: constraint, what it costs, what is happening about it.
A list like that survives a change of manager and it also prevents the most common failure, where a successful first change is followed by eighteen months of nothing because the next one was never chosen.
The one that makes the others possible
Occasionally a single constraint sits upstream of several others: a room, a system setting, a start time that three other rules depend on.
Moving that one first is worth breaking the order for, because the constraints hanging off it either disappear or become much cheaper. It is usually visible on the register as the line that appears in other lines' explanations, which is a good reason to write the explanations down.
What the order looks like after a year
Shorter at the top, longer in the middle, and with two or three entries marked as tested and kept. The hard ones are still there, and they are now the next thing rather than the impossible thing.
That is the realistic ambition for a year of this work, and it is a considerably better position than most rotas are ever in.