Balancing strategic and tactical priorities

When planning design improvements, you need to balance big-picture thinking with fixing immediate problems. After a design audit, teams often find it hard to decide what to tackle first: quick fixes or deeper changes that solve root causes.

• Strategic priorities: Long-term improvements that fix underlying issues
• Tactical priorities: Quick fixes that solve immediate user problems
• Balance assessment: Check if your plan includes both types of work
• Resource division: Set aside specific team time for each priority type
• Progress tracking: Keep an eye on both areas to maintain balance

Teams often make the mistake of focusing too much on quick fixes because they show fast results. But this can lead to the same problems coming back again. On the other hand, only working on big changes might leave users dealing with annoying issues for too long. Good teams work on both at the same time.