All companies have more things they can do than time. Most companies waste time and money building the wrong things. Having too much work in progress and working on the wrong things not only has an opportunity cost but also has a real cost for the people involved. Working on too many things at once adds cognitive load, which, at best, means good people are not allowed sufficient time to think about the right problems and use their talent and creativity well. At worst, it leads to burnout, poor culture, stress and loss of productivity.
In the first instance, problems or opportunities (if you prefer to be more positive) should be prioritised, not features, to reduce the risk of working on features or products that waste valuable software development time and resources.
Reduce work in progress by ruthlessly focusing on the most important and valuable problems to solve before doing any ideation work on solutions or writing any code.
Problem Identification
Start by establishing a systematic way to identify and collect problems:
- Implement user feedback channels (surveys, interviews, support tickets)
- Analyse usage data and metrics
- Conduct regular team brainstorming sessions
- Monitor industry trends and competitor activities
Problem Assessment
Once problems are identified, assess them using the following criteria:
- User Impact: How many users are affected and how severely?
- Business Alignment: Does solving this problem align with company goals?
- Urgency: Is this a time-sensitive issue?
- Complexity: How difficult is it to solve this problem?
- Resource Requirements: What resources (time, money, personnel) are needed?
Prioritisation Framework
Implement a structured prioritisation framework. I have successfully used the cost of delay in a company focused on driving revenue. It is my favourite method for any business, but it may not suit all organisations. It is important to pick one (even if it is a hybrid of some of the methods below) and ensure everyone understands and uses the same one. Ultimately you are trying to reduce the risk of working on something that is not good for the business, customers or is not feasible in some way.
RICE
RICE is an acronym that stands for:
- Reach: The number of people or customers the project will affect in a given time period
- Impact: The degree of positive impact on those reached
- Confidence: How certain you are about your estimates
- Effort: The time and resources required to complete the project
The RICE score is calculated using this formula:
RICE Score = (Reach * Impact * Confidence) / Effort
Higher scores indicate higher priority items.
Pros of RICE Prioritisation
- Objectivity: RICE provides a structured, data-driven approach to decision-making, reducing the influence of personal biases.
- Simplicity: The model is easy to understand and communicate to stakeholders, using just four factors to evaluate projects.
- Comprehensive: It considers multiple important factors, including potential reach, impact, and resource requirements.
- Clear Prioritization: The resulting scores create a clear, ranked list of priorities.
- Flexibility: The model can be adapted to different projects and organisations.
Cons of RICE Prioritization
- Subjectivity in Scoring: Despite its quantitative nature, there’s still subjectivity in assigning values, especially for Impact and Confidence.
- Time-Consuming: Gathering accurate data for each factor can be time-consuming, especially for complex projects.
- Oversimplification: The model may oversimplify complex scenarios or miss important qualitative factors.
- Short-Term Focus: RICE tends to favour short-term, easily measurable outcomes over long-term strategic initiatives.
- Difficulty in Estimating: Accurately estimating Reach and Impact can be challenging, especially for new or innovative projects.
Best Practices
To make the most of RICE prioritisation:
- Align with a single, overarching goal to maintain focus.
- Break larger projects into smaller, manageable chunks.
- Allow team members to take charge of their tasks within the prioritised framework.
- Regularly review and update scores as new information becomes available.
- Use RICE alongside other strategic considerations and prioritisation methods for a more comprehensive approach
ICE Framework
ICE stands for Impact, Confidence, and Ease. It’s simpler than RICE but still provides a structured approach to prioritisation.
- Impact: Potential effect on key metrics
- Confidence: How certain you are about the impact
- Ease: Effort required to implement
Calculate the ICE score by multiplying these three factors.
MoSCoW Method
This framework categorises items into four priority levels:
- Must-have: Critical for success
- Should-have: Important but not vital
- Could-have: Desirable but not necessary
- Won’t-have: Agreed to be deprioritised
Value vs. Effort Matrix
This simple 2×2 matrix plots items based on their value to the business and the effort required to implement them:
High Value |
Low Effort, High Value |
High Effort, High Value |
Low Value |
Low Effort, Low Value |
High Effort, Low Value |
Low Effort |
High Effort |
Kano Model
The Kano Model categorises features into five types:
- Must-be (Basic) Features: Essential features that customers expect. Their absence causes dissatisfaction, but their presence doesn’t increase satisfaction.
- Performance Features: Features where better functionality leads to increased customer satisfaction linearly.
- Delighters (Attractive Features): Unexpected features that create high satisfaction when present, but don’t cause dissatisfaction when absent.
- Indifferent Features: Features that don’t impact customer satisfaction either way.
- Reverse Features: Features that cause dissatisfaction when present and satisfaction when absent.
How It Works
- Identify potential features or improvements.
- Create a questionnaire asking customers about their reaction to each feature’s presence and absence.
- Analyse responses to categorise features into the five types.
- Prioritise features based on their categorisation and implementation cost/effort.
Benefits
- Focuses on customer satisfaction and expectations
- Helps identify which features will have the most impact
- Allows for differentiation between essential and innovative features
- Useful for both new product development and existing product improvement
Considerations
- Requires extensive customer research and feedback
- Customer preferences may change over time
- May not account for all business factors (e.g., strategic goals, market trends)
Application
Product teams typically prioritise features in this order:
- Must-be features (to meet basic expectations)
- Performance features (to compete effectively)
- Delighters (to stand out in the market)
Cost of Delay
Cost of Delay is the potential loss of value or revenue when a project or feature is delayed. It combines an understanding of value with how that value diminishes over time.
The basic formula for Cost of Delay is: CoD = Value / Time. More specifically, it answers the question: “What would it cost us if this was delayed by 1 month?” or “What would it be worth to us if we could get this 1 month earlier?
Cost of Delay typically considers three main factors:
- Business Value – The financial benefit of completing the work
- Time Criticality – The urgency or time-sensitivity
- Risk Reduction/Opportunity Enablement – The potential to reduce risks or enable new opportunities
Benefits
- Focuses on delivering maximum economic value
- Provides an objective, quantitative prioritization method
- Helps balance short-term gains with long-term strategic items
- Aligns well with lean and agile principles
Considerations
- Requires accurate estimation of value and duration
- Works best for well-understood work items
- May oversimplify complex scenarios
- Should be used alongside other strategic considerations
Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)
WSJF prioritizes work based on two main factors:
- Cost of Delay – The economic impact of delaying the work item
- Job Duration – The time required to complete the work
The core principle is to prioritize high-value, short-duration items over lower-value or longer-duration items.
Calculation
The WSJF score for a work item is calculated as:WSJF = Cost of Delay / Job DurationA higher WSJF score indicates higher priority.
Components of Cost of Delay
The Cost of Delay typically considers three factors:
- Business Value – The financial benefit of completing the work
- Time Criticality – The urgency or time-sensitivity
- Risk Reduction/Opportunity Enablement – The potential to reduce risks or enable new opportunities
Process
- Estimate the Cost of Delay and Job Duration for each work item
- Calculate the WSJF score
- Rank items from highest to lowest WSJF score
- Prioritize the backlogBacklog A prioritised list of tasks that are needed to complete a project, including features, bug fixes, non-functional requirements, etc. This list is constantly refined and prioritised as new information surfaces. based on this ranking
Benefits
- Focuses on delivering maximum economic value
- Provides an objective, quantitative prioritization method
- Helps balance short-term gains with long-term strategic items
- Aligns well with lean and agile principles
Considerations
- Requires accurate estimation of Cost of Delay and Duration
- Works best for well-understood work items
- May oversimplify complex scenarios
- Should be used alongside other strategic considerations
Opportunity Scoring
This method balances importance and satisfaction to identify high-impact, low-effort improvements.
Opportunity scoring evaluates features or outcomes based on two main factors:
- Importance – How crucial the feature is to customers
- Satisfaction – How satisfied customers are with the current implementation
The core principle is to prioritize features that are highly important but have low satisfaction scores.
Calculation
The basic opportunity score is calculated as:
Opportunity Score = Importance + (Importance – Satisfaction)
A higher score indicates a greater opportunity for improvement.
Process
- Identify potential features or outcomes
- Survey customers to rate each feature’s importance and their current satisfaction
- Calculate opportunity scores for each feature
- Rank features from highest to lowest opportunity score
- Prioritize development efforts based on this ranking
Benefits
- Focuses on customer needs and expectations
- Provides data-driven prioritization
- Helps identify areas of overinvestment (high satisfaction, low importance)
- Aligns product development with customer value
Variations
- Tony Ulwick’s Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) approach uses a modified formula:
Opportunity = Importance + max(Importance – Satisfaction, 0) - Some teams use a simple matrix plotting Importance vs. Satisfaction to visually identify opportunities
Considerations
- Requires accurate customer feedback
- May not account for all business factors (e.g., strategic goals, development costs)
- Should be used alongside other prioritisation methods for a comprehensive approach