PRIORITY MATRIX QUADRANTS HOW TO
PRIORITY MATRIX QUADRANTS FREE

This framework for prioritization helps you combat the “mere-urgency” effect (more on that later), eliminate time-wasters in your life, and create more mental space to make progress on your goals.įind yourself running around putting out fires all day (figuratively speaking)Īre busy but don’t feel like your work has a high impact Over 3 decades later in his best-selling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey repackaged Eisenhower’s insights into a simple tool to prioritize tasks, now known as the Eisenhower Matrix (also known as The Time Management Matrix, The Eisenhower Box, The Eisenhower Method, and The Urgent-Important Matrix). The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” In a 1954 speech, Eisenhower quoted an unnamed university president who said, “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. How was Eisenhower able to rack up so many accomplishments that would have such a lasting impact on his country and the world? He understood the fundamental difference between the Urgent and the Important. Eisenhower - five-star general during World War II and 34th president of the United States - was a productive guy.ĭuring his two terms as president of the United States, he led the construction of the Interstate Highway System, created NASA, signed into law the first major piece of civil rights legislation since the end of the Civil War, ended the Korean War, welcomed Alaska and Hawaii into the union, and managed to keep the Cold War with Russia cold.Īnd he did it all with panache - Eisenhower was Gallup’s most admired man of the year no less than twelve times. Eisenhower, 1961 address to the Century Associationĭwight D. It should also be noted that this can be a useful tool for both waterfall and agile development methods (though the risk in using this with Agile is that for teams short sprints you will almost always focus on Quadrant IV and Quadrant II will likely not get the investment that it needs.“Who can define for us with accuracy the difference between the long and short term! Especially whenever our affairs seem to be in crisis, we are almost compelled to give our first attention to the urgent present rather than to the important future.” However, when combined with the feature prioritization matrix and other techniques it can provide valuable additional insight about where to focus your efforts. This is obviously a simple method and isn’t without its flaws. You’ll want to be careful not to discard them due to the risk, but you will want to choose very carefully which you decide to make “Must Have’s”. Oftentimes these will be the features that provide true differentiation and a strategic competitive advantage in the long run. Features in Quadrant II can be studied more thoroughly.Features in Quadrant III can also likely either be discarded or noted as “Nice to Have but not critical” in your requirements documents and planning.You can focus on delivering the features in Quadrant IV.You can virtually forget about all of the features in Quadrant I (unless they are a critical competitive necessity).Completing the matrix gives you several useful results:

PRIORITY MATRIX QUADRANTS FREE

Note: a template for this matrix is available in the 280 Group free templates. Using a ranking system (usually based on gut feel rather than hard quantitative data, though the more data you use the better) you can then put each of the features you are considering on the matrix to evaluate payoff versus costs.

On the Y axis you put the cost/risk of developing the corresponding feature. On the X axis you map value to the customer (which presumably correlates to increased revenues & drives customer satisfaction, upgrades and additional long-term sales). The concept behind the four quadrant matrix is very simple. The four quadrant matrix uses a similar approach to help you determine where to invest you development resources to achieve maximum payoff. which uses growth rates and relative market position to categorize products into cash cows, stars, dogs and question marks to determine where to invest your future resources. Many of you are probably familiar with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix. Here I’ll be covering a technique called the four quadrant matrix.

PRIORITY MATRIX QUADRANTS HOW TO

In previous articles, white papers and in my book, Expert Product Management I’ve covered how to use a feature prioritization matrix combined with techniques such as themes, golden features and timed releases to build out your product plans and determine what should be in each of your releases. A Simple Technique for Determining Where to Focus Development Efforts for the Highest Payoff Feature Prioritization Using the Four Quadrant Matrix

Priority matrix quadrants