>That is the fundamental question: how do you establish priorities?
>
>Priority is a dependent variable. I would love to have a procedure
>which takes intuition and guessing out of the equation.

Surely this is a case of establishing things like delivery times from your
suppliers. Certainly in my job where obtaining Rad-hard chips has lead times
approaching a year, but sometimes longer, establishing the circuit, and
getting a BOM for it ordered is an early priority, then laying out the PCBs
becomes the next priority.

For someone doing manufacturing, establishing lead times for getting molds
for plastic parts, lead times for 100k off parts, work flow through the
manufacturing plant, all must have some data available from past products,
which then factor into planning a new product. Some of these must surely fix
mileposts - if this isn't done by then, the plastics guy cannot make the
delivery in time - if we don't have the parts by this date, we miss an
available slot at the manufacturing plant. These surely determine the
critical path items, and that in turn sorts some priorities.

It may be better to have the hardware catch the manufacturing plant slot,
and then sit in a warehouse for 2 months while the software is finalised,
than miss the manufacturing slot and wait a further six months for another
slot to get the hardware. Sure it means storing and double handling to
program, but it may mean the product is out 4 months earlier.

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