Comparison Between Popular Prioritization Methods
The Product Backlog is an ordered list of everything that is known to be needed in the product. It is the single source of requirements for any changes to be made to the product. But before the tasks end up in a sprint backlog, they must be prioritized to capture what delivers the most value or looks most reasonable to complete first.
Prioritizing tasks in a backlog is one of a product owner’s responsibilities. As a principle means “doing the first thing first”. As a process it means “evaluating a group of items and ranking them in their order of importance or urgency”. We continuously make choices and direct our activity to some task.
During agile software development, we deal with the problem of prioritization of N tasks according to M criteria. This is the kind of problem which isn’t solved easily for the human brain and thus needs special solutions. In this article, we’ll mention the most common prioritization methods, summarize their characteristics on a table and provide a link to other articles where we outline their main features.
When considering the prioritization method, we recommend keeping in mind the following criteria:
Simplicity. The simpler the method, the faster you prioritize.
Data-driven prioritization. Some methods rely more on assumptions than on proved data, some not. While it looks like data-driven is the way to go, there are many cases when you don’t have data or don’t have time for complex data-backed prioritization.
The balance between technology constraints and business value. It’s cool to create things that customers love and are ready to pay for. So, there are methods that put the value on top. But they may lack technical consideration. The feature sometimes looks extremely important in business terms, but equally difficult in terms of development.
Best method. Prioritizing for an MVP and for a mature product may be drastically different.
That said, keep in mind that all methods below are not mutually exclusive. Across an entire product development life cycle, they can complement each other at different project stages.
Kano: The customer-driven prioritization technique
In a nutshell, it’s based on different levels of users’ satisfaction with a product’s features and behavior.
Kano: The customer-driven prioritization technique
Walking Skeleton: The best way to prioritize MVP stories
The Walking Skeleton is used in prioritizing features in MVPs and defines which of them are absolutely critical for the product to work.
Walking Skeleton: The simple prioritization technique for MVPs
MoSCoW: One of the simplest approaches for small products
The MoSCoW method requires breaking down all story points into four groups: Must, Should, Could, and Won’t.
MoSCoW: The simple prioritization technique for small products
Product Tree Prioritization Framework: Collaborative innovation game
The game aims to prune product backlog items to ensure that innovative ideas aren’t being left behind.
The Product Tree Prioritization Framework
Purpose Alignment Prioritisation Model: Helps people prioritize work based on the purpose
When we know the purpose of the work, we are able to organize the project to attain the purpose of the work.
The Purpose Alignment Prioritization Model
RICE: Balanced but time-consuming method for mature products
The RICE method is one of those involving calculations. It provides a rate-scoring model for setting priorities.