Impact Effort Eisenhower Matrix and Stack Ranking prioritization methods combined
Impact Effort Eisenhower Matrix and Stack Ranking prioritization methods combined
The Effort Impact Matrix or Eisenhower Principle is a powerful and easy prioritization method to have a clear understanding of what all your priorities should be. It takes into consideration the business impact, the level of effort, and the urgency, to add tasks, to the four quadrants of the below matrix.
This is the description of what tasks should be assigned to each of the quadrants:
Top Left. Low Effort High Impact. Do now.
These are the items that have the biggest impact on the business and typically, without much extra work. This is the quadrant with the most important features and your team should focus on them.
Top Right. High Effort High Impact. Do soon.
These are the projects that are important for the business, but they’re not very easy to do, or there is no urgent need for the business to do them. More likely the tasks here will move to the Do now quadrant at some point.
Bottom Left. Low Effort Low Impact. Do later.
Some of this work is unavoidable, but they are the kind of items you could do when you have nothing on the top quadrants. They typically don’t have a great impact on the business, but they are also very easy to do.
Bottom Right. High Effort Low Impact. Buy a cup of coffee instead.
You shouldn’t use your time with the features added to this quadrant, instead, you should focus on the tasks in the Do now.
This prioritization method is perfect to be used in a group:
Ask your team to write down on their post-it notes all the tasks they’re currently working on.
Then get everyone to place their post-it notes where they believe they should be on the quadrants.
From this point on, have a group conversation about where they’ve put their items, and whether it’s right.
You can also discuss which of the quadrants you should all be focussing on.
This is a great technique to apply to a group because everyone will start to see what everyone else is doing. You’ll be discussing what’s valuable and what it isn’t.
There are templates that you can use in different scenarios: www.sketchbubble.com
How can the Stack Ranking be used with the Impact Effort Matrix?
Stack Ranking is a method, where you rank your tasks from the most important to the least important. Assign the priority numbers one, then two, then three, and continue to n.
Once you know the tasks that are in the quadrants: Do now, Do soon and Do later, you’re in a great position to start ranking and making the tough decisions of what comes 1st, 2nd, 3rd…
Start by prioritizing the items in the Do now and make a single-ordered list. Then move to the Do soon, and finally, the features in the Do later quadrant. Depending on the effort, impact, and urgency, some items may get bumped higher in priority than others, take into consideration that this is not an exact science. Note that we didn’t mention the tasks in the bottom right quadrant, they are neither important nor urgent to the business, you shouldn’t focus on them.
The result of the execution of these two prioritization methods is a product backlog with an ordered list of tasks, that matches the business expectation and considers the feedback from all your stakeholders.
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