How do I assess effort and impact when prioritising research-prompted actions?

Since the template I created, for turning research findings into a prioritised matrix of actions, was published by Miro, I have had several questions about what I mean by effort and impact, and how one would go about quantifying those into low, medium or high for the purposes of prioritisation.

The short answer is ‘it depends’.

In my own most recent use of the template, I haven’t broken down either effort or impact into specific components, let alone quantified them. That is a product though of the nature of the project, rather than the template. Both elements can of course be broken down into any number of considerations, and the nature of your project and/or business will be what those depend upon.

Assessing effort

While by no means exhaustive, I suggest the following could be considered when assessing the effort needed to undertake an action prompted by a research finding:

• What will be the financial cost of the work?
• What personnel/team resources will be required?
• Will the activity disrupt business as usual for staff and/or customers/users?
• Will coaching or leadership be needed to enable the team to complete the work?
• What further input will be needed from customers/users?
• What stakeholder commitment is needed?
• Will additional capabilities be needed in the team?
• Will a business case have to be made for the work to take place?
• Will there be a need to communication changes or developments to users, and is there a strategy in place of that communication?
• Will the work displace other work in the backlog and require re-framing that work in the new context?

Assessing impact

In terms of impact, the following considerations could be assessed:

• What kind of financial gain will the work generate?
• Will it solve pain points for users/customers?
• Is there potential for it to create non-financial gains for the business and/or for customers?
• Will it impact customer satisfaction/ advocacy?
• Will it improve or optimise the customer’s/user’s experience?
• Is it necessary to create better understanding on the part of the user?
• Is there potential for it to boost the profile or reputation of the business?
• Will it enable the team to grow their skills and capabilities?
• Is there a potential that it will open up additional workstreams, and will this be a positive or negative thing?

Do I need to answer all of these questions?

Absolutely not! You may choose to focus on just a small number of considerations, maybe even just one, for example the financial cost of and subsequent financial gain from the work. You may also take a more holistic approach and list all of the factors of relevance to your business. Much depends on your own and your team’s approach, the time available to you to create the prioritisation, or the need to do so in detail.

Also, as I said, these lists are not at all exhaustive and there may be other considerations which are relevant for your work.

However, regardless of which effort and impact considerations you take into account, they will most likely reflect the original objectives of the research. Or at least they should!

Quantifying effort and impact

If you do choose a more holistic approach, it may be useful to apply a scoring system to help you to quantify both effort and impact. A simple scoring system of 1–10 for each consideration (1 being most negative or low, and 10 being most positive or high), with the total generated once you’ve scored each consideration, will enable you to have an effort score and an impact score for each action. That score can then easily be placed on the prioritisation matrix.

Here’s a worked example:

Action: Create a feature on your app which will allow you to save items for later without adding them to your basket

• What will be the financial cost of the work? SCORE = 5/10
• What personnel/team resources will be required? SCORE = 9/10
• What further input will be needed from customers/users? SCORE = 2/10
• Will a business case have to be made for the work to take place? SCORE = 5/10
• Will there be a need to communication changes or developments to users, and is there a strategy in place of that communication? SCORE = 2/10

TOTAL EFFORT SCORE = 23/50 (i.e. medium effort)

• Will it solve pain points for users/customers? SCORE = 6/10
• Is there potential for it to create non-financial gains for the business and/or for customers? SCORE = 3/10
• Will it impact customer satisfaction/ advocacy? SCORE = 5/10
• Will it improve or optimise the customer’s/user’s experience? SCORE = 8/10
• Will it enable the team to grow their skills and capabilities? SCORE = 5/10

TOTAL IMPACT SCORE = 27/50 (i.e. medium impact)

Therefore this action would be placed on the prioritisation matrix as ‘medium effort & medium impact’.

(Note: applying a scale to the axes on the prioritisation matrix will further enhance the ability to place the action in the right quadrant.)

To do this obviously requires a bit more work that just gauging effort and impact on a high level, but it may be better received if there is a considerable investment of resources needed for the work.

Any questions?

If you have any questions about my thinking on this, or would like to discuss it further, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. My LinkedIn profile is https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritaquigley/.