A Practical Priorities Guide

How to Prioritise Tasks in a Project: A Practical Guide

Projects rarely fail because there is nothing to do.

More often, there is too much to do at the same time.

Teams can have hundreds of tasks, multiple deadlines, competing stakeholders and changing priorities. When everything is treated as urgent, it becomes difficult to know what should happen first.

That is why knowing how to prioritise tasks in a project is an essential project management skill.

Effective task prioritisation helps teams focus their time on the work that has the greatest impact, identify what can wait and keep important deadlines from being missed.

In this guide, we look at practical ways to prioritise project tasks, what to do when everything seems urgent and how project management software can make prioritisation easier.

What Does It Mean to Prioritise Tasks in a Project?

Prioritising tasks means deciding which pieces of work should be completed first, which can follow later and which may not need to be done at all.

Not every task has the same level of importance.

For example, a task might be:

• Critical to the project deadline
• Dependent on another task being completed
• Important to a customer or stakeholder
• Linked to a major project milestone
• Blocking another team
• Low impact and able to wait

Good prioritisation helps the team understand these differences.

Instead of simply asking “What tasks do we have?”, project managers need to ask:

“What needs to happen next to keep the project moving?”

Why Is Task Prioritisation Important in Project Management?

Without clear priorities, teams can spend valuable time working on tasks that are easy to complete rather than tasks that are important.

This can create a false sense of progress.

A team might complete 20 small tasks while an important dependency remains blocked.

Effective project task prioritisation helps teams:

• Focus on high-impact work
• Protect important deadlines
• Reduce unnecessary work
• Identify dependencies
• Manage competing demands
• Use resources more effectively
• Reduce bottlenecks
• Keep projects moving towards their objectives

Prioritisation is therefore not just about organising a task list. It is about making decisions about where time and resources should be spent.

How to Prioritise Tasks in a Project

There is no single prioritisation technique that works for every project. However, the following process can help teams make better decisions.

1. Start With the Project Objective

Before deciding which task comes first, understand what the project is trying to achieve.

This sounds obvious, but it is easy for teams to lose sight of the bigger objective once delivery begins.

Ask:

• What is the project trying to achieve?
• What does success look like?
• What deadlines matter most?
• Which outcomes are most important to the business?

A task that looks important in isolation may be less important when compared with the overall project objective.

This is why task prioritisation should connect back to project planning rather than happening separately from it.

2. List Every Outstanding Task

You cannot effectively prioritise work that you cannot see.

Create a complete list of outstanding tasks before deciding what should happen first.

Include:

• Tasks already in progress
• Tasks that have not started
• Upcoming activities
• Dependencies
• Approvals
• Reviews
• Decisions that need to be made

Having everything visible makes it easier to understand the real workload.

It can also reveal that what appears to be a busy project is actually being held up by one or two specific tasks.

3. Identify Dependencies

One of the most important parts of task prioritisation in project management is understanding dependencies.

A dependency means that one task relies on another task being completed first.

For example:

Design → Development → Testing → Launch

Testing cannot begin until development is ready.

Development may not be able to begin until the design has been approved.

That means completing a dependent task early may have little value if the task it relies on is still blocked.

Understanding dependencies helps project managers identify the tasks that are genuinely holding up progress.

4. Consider Impact

Not every task contributes the same amount of value to a project.

When deciding what to prioritise, consider the potential impact of completing or delaying each task.

High-impact tasks might:

• Unlock a major milestone
• Remove a significant blocker
• Protect an important deadline
• Reduce a major project risk
• Enable another team to continue working
• Deliver an important customer outcome

These tasks may deserve a higher priority than smaller tasks that are easier to complete but have limited impact.

5. Look at Deadlines

Deadlines are an important part of prioritisation, but they should not be the only factor.

A task due tomorrow may be important, but a task due next week could still need to start today if it requires several days to complete.

Consider:

• When is the task due?
• How long will it take?
• Does another task depend on it?
• What happens if it is late?
• Is the deadline fixed or flexible?

This prevents teams from simply working on whatever deadline is closest.

6. Consider Risk

Some tasks should be prioritised because delaying them increases project risk.

For example, imagine a project has a technical dependency that has not yet been tested.

It might not have the nearest deadline, but leaving it until the final week could create a significant problem.

Prioritising the task earlier gives the team time to identify and respond to potential issues.

This is closely connected to project risk management.

7. Consider Available Resources

A task may be high priority but impossible to start because the required person, information or resource is unavailable.

Consider:

• Who needs to complete the task?
• Do they have capacity?
• Does someone else need to provide information first?
• Are specialist skills required?
• Is another team responsible for part of the work?

This helps prevent unrealistic task lists where everything is marked as a priority but the team does not have the capacity to deliver it.

How to Prioritise Tasks When Everything Is Urgent

This is one of the most difficult situations for project teams.

If everything is labelled urgent, urgency stops being useful.

Instead, separate tasks by their consequences.

Ask:

• What happens if this task is delayed?
• What task or team is blocked?
• Which deadline is genuinely fixed?
• Which task has the greatest business impact?
• Which task could create the biggest risk?
• Which task unlocks the most other work?

You may discover that five tasks are described as urgent, but only two are actually preventing the project from progressing.

That distinction is where effective prioritisation becomes valuable.

Use a Simple Priority Framework

A simple priority framework can help teams make consistent decisions.

For example, tasks can be categorised as:

Priority	Meaning
Critical	Must be completed to protect the project or a key deadline.
High	Important work that has a significant impact on progress.
Medium	Necessary work that can follow higher-priority activities.
Low	Useful work that can wait without affecting delivery.

The exact labels are less important than having a shared understanding of what they mean.

Try the Impact vs Urgency Approach

Another useful way to prioritise work is to consider both impact and urgency.

	High Urgency	Low Urgency
High Impact	Do first	Plan carefully
Low Impact	Consider whether it can be delegated	Schedule later

This helps avoid a common mistake: assuming that every urgent task is automatically the most important task.

Prioritisation Is Not the Same as Doing Everything Faster

When a project falls behind, the instinct can be to make the team work through the task list faster.

But speed is not always the answer.

If the team is working on the wrong tasks, completing them faster simply creates more completed work without necessarily moving the project closer to its objective.

Effective prioritisation is about doing the right work at the right time.

Review Priorities Regularly

Project priorities are not permanent.

A new risk can appear. A deadline can change. A stakeholder can change the requirements. A dependency can become blocked.

That means priorities should be reviewed throughout the project.

A task that was low priority last week may become critical today.

Regular project reviews should therefore consider:

• What has changed?
• What is now blocked?
• Have deadlines changed?
• Have new risks appeared?
• Are resources still available?
• Are the current priorities still aligned with the project objective?

This is one reason project reporting is so important. Good reporting gives teams the information they need to make better decisions about what happens next.

Common Task Prioritisation Mistakes

Prioritising the Easiest Tasks

Easy tasks feel productive because they can be completed quickly.

But completing several small tasks does not necessarily mean the project is making meaningful progress.

Making Everything High Priority

If every task is high priority, there is effectively no prioritisation.

Teams need enough distinction between priorities to understand where their attention should go first.

Ignoring Dependencies

A task may appear important but cannot move forward until another activity is complete.

Ignoring dependencies can create unnecessary delays and bottlenecks.

Only Looking at Deadlines

The closest deadline is not always the most important task.

Impact, dependencies, risk and effort should also be considered.

Never Reassessing Priorities

Projects change.

A priority list created at the beginning of a project may not reflect reality several weeks later.

How Project Management Software Can Help Prioritise Tasks

Task prioritisation becomes much easier when teams have a clear view of their work.

Project management software can help teams:

• Assign task priorities
• Set deadlines
• Track task progress
• Identify dependencies
• Assign owners
• Monitor overdue work
• Track project milestones
• View workloads
• Report on progress

However, software does not make the prioritisation decision for you.

The value comes from having the information needed to make better decisions.

Instead of searching through spreadsheets, emails and messages to understand what needs attention, teams can bring the work into one place.

From Task Prioritisation to Project Visibility

There is a bigger problem behind task prioritisation.

Teams can have well-organised task lists and still struggle to understand whether their work is actually moving the business forward.

That is because tasks do not exist in isolation.

They connect to projects, projects connect to objectives and objectives connect to wider business strategy.

This is where CombinedWork takes a different approach.

CombinedWork is a Project Management Operating System designed to connect strategy with execution.

Instead of simply asking which task needs to be completed next, teams can see the wider context around the work.

That means priorities can be connected to:

• Project objectives
• Business goals
• Deadlines
• Risks
• Dependencies
• People and responsibilities
• Project progress

The goal is not simply to create a longer task list.

It is to help teams understand what matters, why it matters and what needs to happen next.

A Practical Project Task Prioritisation Checklist

Before starting work, ask:

• What is the project trying to achieve?
• Which tasks have the greatest impact?
• Which tasks have fixed deadlines?
• Are there any dependencies?
• Which tasks are blocking other work?
• Are there any risks that need to be addressed?
• Who is responsible for each task?
• Do the required resources exist?
• What happens if the task is delayed?
• Do the current priorities still match the project objective?

Final Thoughts

Knowing how to prioritise tasks in a project is about more than deciding what goes at the top of a to-do list.

It means understanding the relationship between tasks, deadlines, dependencies, risks, resources and project objectives.

The most effective teams do not simply ask, “What can we complete today?”

They ask:

“What work will make the biggest difference to the project right now?”

When priorities are clear, teams can focus their time, reduce bottlenecks and make progress with greater confidence.

And when task-level work is connected to the wider strategy, prioritisation becomes more than task management.

It becomes a way of keeping the entire business moving.

Plan the work. Connect it to strategy. Prioritise what matters. Track execution.

See how CombinedWork connects projects, people and strategy.