Prioritizing has never been easier!
Deciding which initiatives to include in your future product releases can be a difficult process. With the Prioritization Board, that process is now easier, more productive, and more transparent.
Based on product management best practices, the Prioritization Board helps you and your team objectively score opportunities to decide what to include on the roadmap. Most importantly, the Prioritization Board can help guide your product strategy discussions and help you get support from key stakeholders.
Each roadmap has a unique Prioritization Board. You prioritize roadmap items based on a customized set of Benefit and Cost categories. ProductPlan then scores and ranks each opportunity based on the relative weighting of each category.
Using the Prioritization Board
Users can add items to the prioritization from anywhere on the roadmap. To select individual items for prioritization, simply right-clicking the item and select 'Prioritize" from either the roadmaps timeline or list view.
To add multiple items, users can hold down the "Shift" key and select multiple items and even the entire lane for prioritization!
Alternatively, users can select items for prioritization using the table view's planned or parked section. Users will want to first select the items for prioritization, then select "Prioritize" from the Actions drop-down menu (the Actions drop-down will only appear once an item is selected).
Next, navigate to the prioritization board using the clipboard icon on your roadmap.
You can then decide to modify, add, or delete columns in the Benefit and Cost Categories by clicking "Edit Columns" in the top right of the Prioritization Board. They are customizable to suit your needs.
The Prioritization Board uses a scale of 1-5 to rank each opportunity in a category. One (1) signifies low Benefit or low Cost, while five (5) represents a high Benefit or high Cost.
The total score and rank is a composite of Benefit versus Cost and takes into account each column’s weighting. An item with 5’s on the Benefit side and 1’s on the Cost side will calculate the maximum score. You can adjust the weighting of each column to the number of your choosing.
Example Scoring
In the example below, the first item “Cloud Support” has a score of 72 out of a maximum of 120 calculated in the following way:
In the Benefit section, the first column’s score is 1, so that gets 20% of the 20 possible points (4 points). The second column score is 4, so that gets 80% of the 20 possible points (16 points). The third column score is 2, so that gets 40% of the 20 possible points (8 points).
In the Cost section, remember that a low number affects the score positively (reverse of the Benefit calculation). In the first Cost column the score is 2, so that gets 80% of the 20 possible points (16). The second column score is 4, so that gets 40% of the 20 possible points (8 points). The third column score is 1, so that gets the maximum of the 20 possible points (20 points).
Adding up the points (4,16,8,16,8,20) you get a score of 72.
Whether an item exists on the Roadmap or on the Parking Lot is denoted by the icon to its left. To move a Parking Lot item onto the Roadmap, you can drag and drop it from the Actions column to the right of the Planning Board.
Once you have a score for each item, you can have an objective discussion with the team about what to include on the product roadmap.