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The Impact Effort Prioritisation Matrix

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The Impact Effort Prioritisation Matrix (also called the Action Priority Matrix) is a decision-making tool allowing its users to categorize ideas according to the effort needed and the potential impact.

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The Matrix's Creator

Dave Gray, The Impact Effort Prioritisation Matrix Creator

Dave Gray

Dave Gray is the founder and chairman of XPLANE and also co-founder of Vizthink, a global community dedicated to the use of visualization. An artist, journalist and information designer, he is passionate about applied creativity...

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Description of the Impact Effort Prioritisation Matrix

It is increasingly difficult to sort out activities and get to a good decision in our increasingly busy lives at work and at home. The Impact Effort Prioritisation Matrix (also called the Action Priority Matrix) is a decision-making exercise allowing its users to categorize ideas according to the effort needed and the potential impact.

The four sections of the matrix are:

  • Quick Wins (High Impact, Low Effort)

    These are the most attractive ideas/projects, giving you a good return for relatively little effort.

  • Major Projects (High Impact, High Effort)

    While these give good returns, they take a long time to complete and can be complex to execute.

  • Wait (Low Impact, Low Effort)

    Don’t worry too much about doing these – if you’ve got spare time, do them.

  • Don’t do (Low Impact, High Effort)

    Avoid these. Not only do they give low returns, they crowd out time which would be better used elsewhere.

Methodology

The steps that are presented here can be followed in order to reach consensus in a group about which ideas or project to prioritize. Note that you may use this matrix differently and that you can even use it alone according to your own set of goals.

Form small groups of ideally 3-4 individuals, but it can scale to any size. Generally the Impact Effort Prioritisation Matrix is a quick exercise following these steps:

1

Frame a goal in terms by answering the “what to do?” or “what we need?” question.

2

Each team takes 10-15 minutes to generate ideas individually on sticky notes, and place them on the left of the matrix.

3

Then the team members may present their ideas to their group and place them in the matrix according to the effort and impact.

4

The group can then discuss the position of elements in the matrix. The ideas situated in the high impact - low effort section are the ones that the group agrees to prioritize.

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