30 Second Overview
Prioritisation without structure is chaos. Teams argue, the loudest voice wins, and customer value gets lost.
Escaping the prioritisation trap means moving beyond intuition to frameworks that align around impact, feasibility, and risk. Good prioritisation sharpens focus, accelerates delivery, and builds stakeholder trust.
1: Prioritisation: What Success Looks Like
- A consistent framework (e.g. RICE, ICE, MoSCoW) is used for evaluating work.
- Decisions are based on impact, effort, confidence, and customer pain.
- Stakeholders understand and support prioritisation logic.
- Low-value items are delayed or discarded without friction.
- Backlog reflects current strategy, not historic ideas.
2: Prioritisation Case Study
Spotify uses a structured prioritisation model called the “Bets Board”, where product teams frame initiatives as “bets” with defined upside, downside, and confidence levels. This approach replaced ad hoc prioritisation with a transparent framework that aligned teams on business impact and strategic value. As a result, product and engineering teams gained clarity on why certain features were greenlit while others were parked — reducing internal friction and accelerating decision-making.
3: Prioritisation Step-by-Step
- Choose a prioritisation framework that suits your product stage.
- Define scoring criteria with your team and stakeholders.
- Score backlog items consistently and review quarterly.
- Communicate prioritisation rationale with stakeholders.
- Continuously re-evaluate based on new data or shifting goals.
4: Prioritisation Checklist
- Your prioritisation framework agreed and documented
- Criteria clearly defined and consistently applied
- Stakeholder input is considered, not dominant
- Prioritisation supports strategy
- Reviewed regularly
5: Prioritisation Pitfalls (and How to Avoid Them)
| Pitfall | Avoidance Strategy |
| No shared method | Adopt a lightweight framework with buy-in from the team |
| Priorities driven by internal politics | Use data and impact to make decisions transparent |
| Framework too complex | Start simple — optimise later |
| Stale priorities | Review quarterly or when major shifts occur |
6: Prioritisation FAQ
Which framework is best? It depends — RICE works well for SaaS. ICE is simpler. Choose what your team can use consistently.
Should stakeholders influence priority? Yes — but based on evidence, not opinion.
Can we change priorities mid-sprint? Avoid this unless critical — it disrupts flow and morale.
What if everything feels important? Use effort/impact matrices to clarify trade-offs.
Read more about prioritisation frameworks on this related blog article
