As a digital service company grows, not only does the number of customers increase, but also their expectations for fast and smooth processing of their tasks and projects. At the same time, the number of internal projects and the number of employees assigned to these projects increases. Even a highly motivated team reaches its limits at some point - not every request can be processed immediately. Management must therefore prioritize. But how do you decide which tasks add the most value to the company?

Let's imagine the following scenario: A support employee is looking after several customer projects at the same time. Each customer expects their tickets to be handled with high priority. However, the individual tickets differ in their urgency, duration and complexity. A well-trained employee may be able to keep track of the tasks in a project. But what happens if this employee is responsible for several projects and each project has a long list of open tasks?

A simple list of tickets quickly becomes confusing here. Each ticket contains details that need to be taken into account when prioritizing: Are there tight deadlines? Which tasks have the greatest impact on customer success? How long does it take to process? Which ticket is particularly complicated or risky? In a growing company that is constantly managing new customers and projects, it becomes virtually impossible to keep track of all this information and prioritize correctly using just a list view.

The basic problem is that everyone involved has a different view of the situation:

This reveals a fundamental organizational problem - everyone involved has a different perspective and different priorities.

To meet these challenges, Leadtime offers four specially developed planning tools: Big Picture, Pools, Pipelines and Stacks. These tools create a visual representation of the workload and make it possible to systematically manage the different perspectives and priorities within the company. They help to maintain an overview not only within a project, but across all projects and to make the right decisions.

The Big Picture tool is the first step in the planning chain and provides a project overview at individual customer level. It displays all the tasks of a project as visually organized maps that are divided into task types, such as features and bugs . Within these categories, the tasks can be prioritized according to importance.

Example: A support employee can work with the customer to determine which tasks need to be completed first in order to offer the greatest added value.

Pools extend the Big Picture to the multi-project level. Administrators usually look after several customers at the same time and have to balance the priorities between these projects. The pool is therefore a multi-project dashboard in which the tasks of all supported customers are displayed together. This allows the clerk to keep track of all the tickets relevant to them.

Example: A support employee sees that a ticket in project A is urgent, but project B has a greater long-term impact. With the pool tool, he can decide across all projects which ticket has priority.

Pipeline planning is used for the weekly allocation of tasks to team members, especially developers or specialized experts. The aim here is to use the capacities of the team members efficiently and to define a sensible sequence for completing the tasks. The pipeline distributes the tasks across projects and customers throughout the week and shows how much working time is available to each developer.

Example: The support staff coordinate which customer projects have priority and ensure that the developers focus their time on the most valuable tickets.

The stack is the final tool in the planning chain and provides the individual task list for each specialist employee. The tasks that have been defined for an employee in the pipeline appear in their stack in the specified order. The stack functions as a personalized Kanban board that clearly structures the workflow and promotes the productive processing of tasks.

Example: A developer can see at a glance which tasks are prioritized for him and can concentrate on processing them without being interrupted by additional requests.

The four planning tools in Leadtime interlock like gears and enable efficient prioritization and task management at all levels:

This structured workflow not only promotes efficiency in day-to-day work, but also creates a resilient basis for strategic planning and continuous value creation within the company.