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How To Prioritise Digital Work

Sequence by binding constraint rather than by effort or enthusiasm. The work that matters is whatever currently prevents the next unit of growth, and only one thing holds that position at a time.

Product leadership prioritising digital initiatives on an impact-versus-effort matrix board — Rank digital projects by balancing business impact against technical complexity and implementation lead time.

Effort-versus-impact Scoring Is The Common Method And It Has A Flaw: It Treats All Impact As Additive.
If nobody can find you, a conversion improvement scored as high impact returns nothing, because it multiplies a number that is currently too small.
The Alternative Is To Ask What Would Happen If Each Item Were Completed And Nothing Else Changed.
Work that would not move the outcome on its own is not ready yet, whatever its score. That single question re-orders most backlogs.
Then Apply Reversibility.
Among items that would move the outcome, prefer the ones that are cheap to undo and quick to learn from. A three-month project that teaches you nothing until it ships is a large bet on an untested assumption.

Then revisit on a cadence.

Constraints move: fixing visibility makes conversion the constraint, and fixing conversion makes capacity the constraint. A roadmap fixed for a year funds work that stopped being the priority in month three.

Covered in Digital Strategy

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is Wrong With Impact-Effort Scoring?

It assumes impacts add up independently. They do not: improving conversion when nobody visits multiplies a number that is too small. Constraint order matters more than individual scores.

How Often Should Priorities Be Revisited?

Quarterly for most organisations. Constraints move as each is removed, and a roadmap fixed for a year continues funding work that stopped being the priority early on.

What Does This Cover?

Sequence by binding constraint rather than by effort or enthusiasm. The work that matters is whatever currently prevents the next unit of growth, and only one thing holds that position at a time.

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How To Prioritise Digital Work

Effort-versus-impact Scoring Is The Common Method And It Has A Flaw: It Treats All Impact As Additive.

The Alternative Is To Ask What Would Happen If Each Item Were Completed And Nothing Else Changed.

Then Apply Reversibility.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where this applies

Related Services

Read next

Apply this to your own situation

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How To Prioritise Digital Work

Effort-versus-impact Scoring Is The Common Method And It Has A Flaw: It Treats All Impact As Additive.

The Alternative Is To Ask What Would Happen If Each Item Were Completed And Nothing Else Changed.

Then Apply Reversibility.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where this applies

Related Services

Read next

Apply this to your own situation