FIFO is not an efficient way to prioritise work, though. Unless all work has about the same value and urgency, in which case, I guess, that sounds nice.
If you are an specialized department, insulated from the organizational goals, and circled by people that only speak in riddles, FIFO is the best you can do.
The context was in R and D at a large organization. Are some projects better funded/further along/seemingly more important to spearhead? Sure. But that was not how this department handled the workload. Dozens of people are coming to them a day for work done on hundreds of separate projects potentially. They can’t afford to triage this workload nor even can you really. Like I said, no one complained because despite FIFO turnaround was still faster (that afternoon if you got your job in during the morning potentially) and cheaper than any third party vendor.
