Impact vs Effort Planning
A lightweight tool for individuals and small teams to process poorly defined tasks, hard tradeoffs, and uncertainty.
A Unique Approach
The core of this method is ranking items directly against each other one at a time, one concern at a time (impact, effort, etc). Doing so lets us prioritize earlier, easier, and with the items being less well defined.
The process itself even helps develop a more grounded understanding of your priorities.
Ideate
Collect your thoughts, gather notes, and say "Thank you, goodbye!" to ideas that no longer spark joy.
Rank
Sort each highlighted item relative to the items above it. By putting items head-to-head, you quickly gain insights on the real shape of the tasks and the tradeoffs you'll need to make.
Act
- Traditional IvE artifact
- Priority-ranked list
- Completion checklist
- "Recycle" to start over
... There's More!
Sharing
Invite individuals to view or edit with you, or start a team to always share your work.
Real-time Collaboration
Live documents allow easy collaboration with friends or teams.
Versioning
"Recycle" charts & review archived versions.
Customization
Make any 2x2 matrix you prefer (not just impact vs effort).
Export
Bulk export your finished list for transferring to your official ticket system
Why another tool?
I know you already have a way to track and prioritize items.
After winding down a chunk of work (a "sprint" or whathaveyou), I want a break from my daily task queue. This humble tool represents my favorite way of setting aside "task mind" and looking curiously toward the future.
This is where I/we go to grok poorly defined tasks, hard tradeoffs, and uncertainty - before someone insists "how many points is that?"