3x3 Prioritization Method Template
Help your team prioritize features and business ideas based on customer impact and effort. Group initiatives to work on next and in the future.
About the 3x3 Prioritization Method Template
The 3x3 Prioritization Method Template, or action priority matrix, helps teams prioritize features and initiatives based on their user impact and the level of effort needed for success. It offers a new level of detail that the 2x2 Prioritization Matrix (or Lean Prioritization Method) may lack.
With nine “buckets” or areas of interest, your team can quickly decide if an idea or feature is low, medium, or high effort. The team can also accordingly decide if the idea or feature will likely have low, medium, or high impact.
As a visual tool, 3x3 prioritization helps teams promptly reach an agreement on quick wins, big projects, filler tasks, or anything that could waste time.
What is the 3x3 prioritization method?
The 3x3 prioritization method is a visual representation of where teams should allocate their time and resources. There are typically 4 quadrants in a 3x3 prioritization method matrix:
Quick wins: actions fundamental to team success that lead to the best return on effort and should be prioritized before anything else.
Major projects: complex actions with long-term return on effort, best if selectively chosen and efficiently executed.
Filler activities: everyday tasks that can easily be deprioritized.
Time sucks: activities too time-consuming that can be delegated or avoided.
This matrix is adaptable for use during daily team stand-ups, or for strategic action plans or Agile sprint planning.
When to use the 3x3 prioritization method
This prioritization approach can help product managers and cross-functional teams:
Quickly determine what activities or ideas to focus on
Make the most of limited resources
Reflect on strategies and goals without wasting time or effort
Align priorities and sync up on solutions to any problems discussed
The framework can be started by a team lead, who then invites other team members to offer feedback and add ideas to the four quadrants as needed.
Create your own 3x3 prioritization matrix
Making your own 3x3 prioritization matrix is easy. Miro’s is the perfect tool to create and share it. Get started by selecting the 3x3 Prioritization Method Template, then take the following steps to make one of your own.
Decide on a clear objective for your impact effort analysis. Ask your team whether that objective should be strategic, tactical, project-related, product- or service-related, or personal (in terms of development or team growth). Have a clear scope or time frame in mind, too – are you planning for days, weeks, months, or over a year?
Brainstorm what you need to achieve those objectives. Examples of needs driven by this framework can include prioritizing actions from a planning session, developing priorities for a project team, establishing milestones for an employee’s performance plan, or prioritizing features to focus on from a product backlog.
Collect and refine your team ideas. Everyone can draft their ideas or contributions on sticky notes. Then, refine them with a live call or video chat feedback as needed.
Position your ideas according to impact and effort. Encourage everyone to assess where their idea fits on the quadrant, and move it accordingly: is it a quick win, major project, filler idea, or time suck?
Create an action plan with the next steps. Do specific team members need to test an idea’s validity? Schedule a follow-up meeting? Clarify impact and effort? Remember, value can be defined as qualitative (low to high) or quantitative (by a numbered scale, currency, time spent, or volume of output).
Share the outcome with anyone who couldn’t attend the session. Invite team members, clients, or stakeholders through Slack, email, or a public or private hyperlink as needed so that everyone can catch up on the details.
Get started with this template right now.
Risk Assessment Template
Works best for:
Leadership, Project Management, Decision Making
Every business faces risk. The more you factor it into your decisions early on, the better prepared you’ll be to avoid, absorb, or mitigate the risks you encounter. Use Miro’s risk assessment template to collaborate on a clear-eyed risk assessment that ensures you’ll never be caught unawares.
Visual Story Map Template
Works best for:
Marketing, Desk Research, Mapping
Some people like to think of a visual story map as a stylized to-do list, but it’s a lot more powerful than that. Visual story mapping allows your product management team to visualize multiple dimensions of information.
T-Chart Template
Works best for:
Ideation, Operations, Strategic Planning
T-Charts can help you compare and contrast two different ideas, group information into different categories, and prove a change through “before” and “after” analysis. T-Charts are visual organizational tools that enable you to compare ideas, so you can evaluate pros and cons, facts and opinions, strengths and weaknesses, or big-picture views versus specific details. Designers and content creators can use T-Charts to turn possibilities into actionable ideas. T-Charts are useful for discussing differences and similarities with your team or clients and can help you to reach a decision together.
App Development Canvas Template
Works best for:
Market Research, Product Management, User Experience
Ever noticed that building a successful app requires lots of players and moving parts? If you’re a project manager, you definitely have. Lucky for you, an app development canvas will let you own and optimize the entire process. It features 18 boxes, each one focusing on a key aspect of app development, giving you a big-picture view. That way you can fine-tune processes and get ahead of potential problems along the way—resulting in a smoother path and a better, tighter product.
Work Breakdown Structure Template
Works best for:
Project Management, Mapping, Workflows
A work breakdown is a project management tool that lays out everything you must accomplish to complete a project. It organizes these tasks into multiple levels and displays each element graphically. Creating a work breakdown is a deliverable-based approach, meaning you’ll end up with a detailed project plan of the deliverables you must create to finish the job. Create a Work Breakdown Structure when you need to deconstruct your team's work into smaller, well-defined elements to make it more manageable.
Bang for the Buck Template
Works best for:
Project Management, Strategic Planning, Prioritization
The name pretty much says it—this Agile framework is all about helping you maximize efficiency by powering collaboration between product managers and dev teams. Together you can go over each to-do on the project agenda and evaluate them in terms of costs and benefits. That way you can prioritize tasks based on how much bang for your buck they deliver. This template is great for teams and organizations that want to make a strategic plan to tackle an upcoming sprint.