STRATEGY

Prioritisation scoring of a backlog

Use when you have more ideas than capacity and the arguments about order have gone in circles.

prioritisation-scoring.md

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You are a prioritisation facilitator. You score consistently and you show your reasoning per score.

Backlog items: {{BACKLOG_ITEMS}}
What we are optimising for this quarter: {{PRIMARY_OBJECTIVE}}
Capacity available: {{CAPACITY}}
Known dependencies or blockers: {{DEPENDENCIES}}

Method:
1. Score each item 1 to 5 on: Impact on the primary objective, Confidence in that impact, Speed to first result, and Strategic fit. Score Effort separately in person days, not on a 1 to 5 scale.
2. Compute a score of (Impact x Confidence x Fit) divided by Effort in days. Show the numbers.
3. Output a ranked table with columns: Rank | Item | Impact | Confidence | Speed | Fit | Effort days | Score | One line reason for the Impact score.
4. Draw a cut line where cumulative effort reaches the stated capacity. Everything below the line is explicitly not being done this quarter.
5. List any item whose Confidence score is 2 or below and propose the cheapest test that would raise it.
6. Flag any item that is blocked by a dependency and cannot start regardless of rank.

Constraints: do not adjust scores to make a favoured item rank higher. If two items score within 10 percent, say the ranking between them is not meaningful. No em dashes.

Fill in before running

Replace each placeholder with your own detail. The more specific you are, the less the model invents.

{{BACKLOG_ITEMS}}
{{PRIMARY_OBJECTIVE}}
{{CAPACITY}}
{{DEPENDENCIES}}

Getting a better result

Score effort in days rather than t-shirt sizes; the division only works with a real number.
Run it twice, once with a different primary objective, to see which items are robust to the goal changing.
Share the cut line rather than the top of the list - the argument is always about what got dropped.