Prioritization Matrix is a fun collaborative prioritization tool to compare the relative merits of alternative actions visually.
This is an extremely powerful activity which combines brainstorming, team building and action planning. It's one that I often use with teams as the conversation is always extremely fruitful.
Here's an example of a completed matrix that you will end up with when you follow the process below.
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Objectives
When Would You Use It?
Are There Any Rules?
Resources Required
Process
- 1The Facilitator explains the business objectives of the process (i.e. what is it we’re looking to achieve).
- 2The Team brainstorms all candidates for action but does not put them on the chart yet.
- 3The Team rates each one according to:
- 4The Team places each on the chart according to their scores and moderates their relative positioning to arrive at a sensible distribution.
- 5The Facilitator then draws the prioritization sector in the top right of the matrix (everything inside this should be both impactful and easy to do).
- 6Action Planning time!
Tips for the Phases
Brainstorm phase
Prioritization phase
Most favorable options
Action planning
How to prioritize issues rather than solutions
Secret Sauce
- 1Breakdown the Do-ability criterion into its component parts (cost, effort and risk).
- 2Agree on the relative weighting of each in % terms.
- 3Rate the items on each component.
- 4Total the product of rating x weighting (see table in the free download).
- 5Transfer to chart.
Just wanted to say thanks.
Its more for myself than for business. I admit I struggle with organization. Thanks very much for these tools to help me in any endeavour I encounter
Pleasure Melissa … always nice to personally organized 🙂
Thank you for sharing. Great tool
Thanks Johanne
I think the participants will enjoy this tool. I will try this in my agri-fishery issues prioritization workshop. Thanks for the share!
Glad you like it Nynn
I just used this tool at a time management workshop with a team and it was very useful. They brought a relevant issue and came to some very effective conclusions. We were discussing the 4 quadrants by Steven Covey the day before, and the team realized, that whatever ended up in the top left corner of the matrix here (high impact, hard do-ability) needed to go in the second quadrant tasks for planning. I really liked that connection between the tools. Thank you for posting these great tools, both the substance and the presentation are excellent.
Your work is extremely relevant. The way you present it makes it easy to implement and offer some great solutions to our learners/ teams and managers. Wonderful work. Thank you
[…] using the Prioritization Matrix if you end up with a long list in any of the categories so you focus on the ones most likely to […]