Every project is unique, yet each one has one common element - a backlog. Essentially, it is a list of tasks that need to be addressed. Often as not, many of these tasks seem really important, but it's never possible to tackle them all at once. Hence, prioritizing tasks is crucial for any team striving to deliver a project successfully. In this article, I will introduce a few helpful strategic prioritization techniques. Depending on your project’s needs and preferences, you can pick one, use a few at once to compare the results, or use them interchangeably.
RICE
The first method stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. It provides a quantitative approach to prioritizing tasks by evaluating them based on these four criteria:
- Reach: How many people will be affected by the task within a specific time period? This is typically measured in the number of users per month, but it can be days or weeks. For example, a feature that will be used by 80% of your users will have a much larger score than a feature that will solve a problem only for 2%.
- Impact: How much will this task contribute to the overall goals? This is often rated on a scale from 1 (minimal impact) to 3 (high impact), but you can choose your own, like 1-10.
- Confidence: How sure are you about the estimates for Reach, Impact, and Effort? This is expressed as a percentage. High confidence indicates reliable data and certainty.
- Effort: How much time and resources will be required to complete the task? This is usually measured in person-months or hours, but it can be calculated as a number of days, weeks or sprints.
By calculating the RICE score, which is (Reach × Impact × Confidence) / Effort, teams can objectively prioritize tasks based on their potential value versus the effort required. In contrast to some other prioritization frameworks, RICE prioritization can be applied consistently to a wide range of diverse features.
MoSCoW
The MoSCoW method helps in categorizing tasks into four distinct groups:
- Must-Have: Non-negotiable requirements that are critical to the project’s success. These tasks are essential and must be completed.
- Should-Have: Important but not critical tasks. These are high-priority items that should be included if possible but are not essential - without them, the product still works.
- Could-Have: Desirable but not necessary tasks. These can be included if time and resources allow.
- Won't Have: Tasks that are not a priority in the current timeframe. These can be deferred or omitted without impacting the project’s success.
By categorizing tasks this way, teams can focus on the most crucial elements first, ensuring that essential requirements are met before tackling less critical items. However, MoSCoW technique is the most effective for teams that want to include representatives from the whole organization in the process, otherwise they can make poor decisions about where to slot each feature. Also, MoSCoW itself doesn’t help in determining which items belong in which group - some objective scoring system might come in handy.
User Story Mapping
User Story Mapping is not a prioritization technique per se, but it visually organizes user stories based on the user journey. It helps teams understand the product from the user’s perspective and identify the most valuable features. The process involves three main steps:
- Identify User Activities: Identify high-level activities that users perform with the product. For example, for an online shopping platform, user activities might include browsing products, adding items to a cart, and checking out.
- Define Steps: Break down each activity into specific steps or tasks. Similar to the examples above, activities can be broken down into using a search engine, viewing order details, and selecting quantity.
- Create User Stories: Further decompose steps into detailed user stories that focus on delivering value to the user. For example, “As a user, I want to search for products by name so I can quickly find what I’m looking for.”.
The next step is arranging the user stories along the horizontal axis to map out the sequence of actions. On the vertical axis, you should prioritize the stories by placing the most critical tasks at the top and the least important ones below. As a result, you visualize the minimum viable product (MVP) at the top, ensuring the team focuses on delivering the most valuable features first.
User Story Mapping helps teams focus on the user experience and ensures that the most important and valuable features are addressed first.
Eisenhower Matrix
The Eisenhower Matrix is a prioritization tool that categorizes tasks based on urgency and importance. The matrix is divided into four fields:
- Urgent and Important:- tasks that require immediate attention and are critical to achieving key objectives.
- Important but Not Urgent: - tasks that are crucial but can be scheduled for later. These are important for long-term success, yet don’t need immediate action.
- Urgent but Not Important: - tasks that need quick attention but are not critical to long-term success. These can often be delegated.
- Neither Urgent Nor Important: - tasks that can be deferred or ignored because they have little impact on overall goals.
This method is simple and intuitive but enough to help teams focus on tasks that align with strategic objectives and avoid getting sidetracked by less important activities.
APM Matrix
Another matrix-based method is the APM (Action Priority Matrix), which divides tasks based on impact and effort into four categories:
- Quick Wins: High impact, low effort tasks.
- Major Projects: High impact, high effort tasks.
- Fill-Ins: Low impact, low effort tasks.
- Thankless Tasks: Low impact, high effort tasks.
APM matrix helps teams identify tasks that will provide the most significant benefits with the least effort. It is also very simple, but usually requires some preparation, team cooperation, and adequate goal setting - without them, it’s hard to gauge both the impact and the effort levels.
Kano Model
The Kano Model, developed by Japanese professor Noriaki Kano around 1980, is named after its creator. This model categorizes and analyzes various customer requirements, classifying them into basic, performance, and excitement needs. Based on this framework, also referred to as the customer satisfaction model, products and services can be refined to increase their appeal and value to customers. This unique model categorizes features based on customer satisfaction:
- Basic Needs (Must-Be Features): These are the essential features that customers expect as a given. If these features are missing, customers will be dissatisfied, but their presence doesn’t necessarily increase satisfaction because they are considered standard.
- Performance Needs (Performance Features): These features directly correlate with customer satisfaction—the better the feature performs, the more satisfied the customers are. For instance, faster page loading times on a website directly improve user satisfaction.
- Excitement Needs (Delighters): These are the unexpected features that can significantly boost customer satisfaction and create delight. Customers do not anticipate them, so their presence can be a major differentiator. An example could be an online store offering personalized discounts based on a user’s purchase history.
- Indifferent Features: These features neither improve nor diminish customer satisfaction. Users are neutral about them, meaning these features don’t impact the overall experience. For example, adding a minor aesthetic change to an app’s interface might be something users don’t particularly care about.
- Reverse Features: Interestingly, these are features that might actually cause dissatisfaction if they are included. These could be features that some users might not want or find intrusive. For example, automatic video playback on a website could annoy users, even though it might have been intended as a useful feature.
The Kano Model stands out from other prioritization frameworks due to its strict emphasis on how customers respond to each feature. Unlike the APM Matrix, which may include customer satisfaction as one of its scoring factors along with others, the Kano Model focuses primarily on the extent to which a new feature will enhance user satisfaction.
Cost of Delay
Cost of Delay is a financial metric that measures the economic impact of delaying a task. It combines the urgency and value of a task into a single metric, helping teams make informed decisions about prioritization. This method is particularly useful when you need to make decisions that directly affect your business’s bottom line.
- Duration: The time it takes to complete the task.
- Value: The economic benefit of completing the task.
- Urgency: The cost associated with delaying the task.
Here’s a straightforward method for calculating the Cost of Delay:
- Determine the expected monthly revenue that the new project or task will generate.
- Estimate the time required for your team to complete the task.
- Divide the estimated monthly revenue by the task’s completion time to determine the financial impact of delaying the task by one month.
This calculation reveals the financial impact of delaying the project's completion by one month. By calculating the Cost of Delay, teams can prioritize tasks that will have the highest financial impact if delayed. For example, if a project is expected to generate $100,000 per month and will take three months to complete, the cost of delaying it by one month would be approximately $33,333. This calculation helps teams prioritize tasks that will have the highest financial impact if delayed, ensuring that resources are allocated to the most time-sensitive and valuable projects first.
Summary
Effective backlog prioritization is vital for the success of any project, especially in the fast-paced world of IT. By carefully selecting and implementing the right prioritization techniques—whether it’s the data-driven approach of RICE, the clear categorization of MoSCoW, the user-centric perspective of User Story Mapping, or the strategic matrices like Eisenhower and APM—teams can ensure they focus on the most important tasks and optimize their workflow.
Ultimately, the best approach depends on your project's unique needs and goals. By choosing the right method or combination of methods, teams can ensure they are working efficiently and delivering maximum value to their customers, setting the stage for a successful project outcome.
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