Prioritization matrix template

• A list or general understanding of the work you or your team need to do

• A shared understanding of your team or projects goals

• An open mind

• This template, mate!

Add the top goal(s) for your team and make sure everyone is aligned.
Prioritizing with these goals in mind creates a shared understanding of what will (and won't) help you achieve your ultimate goals.

Add sticky notes for work that needs prioritizing. Align on a time horizon for when you want to do all this work by.

Add information like the description of the work, level of effort, risks and dependencies, and the business or project impacts.

Consider adding the work before the session to speed things up!

As a team go through each piece of work and agree where it belongs on the prioritization graph.
Depending on the detail of discussion this can take as much or as little time as necessary.
It can be hard to know exactly where something fits but it’ll get easier as you start plotting more work.

Draw two lines across the graph as in the example.
This will separate the work into must do nice-to-haves and won’t do.
The top-left section is high impact and high urgency and should be prioritized first.
The bottom-right is lower priority due to being low impact and low urgency. This means it will have to wait until more important work is done.