brandonburrus Purpose
Turn a set of candidate features, bets, or backlog items into a ranked and sequenced roadmap, with the scoring visible and the cut pile explicit. The deliverable is an ordering and its reasoning, not a spec or a task breakdown. The discipline is refusing to rank by gut or by whoever asked loudest: score against criteria tied to the goal, sequence by dependency and risk, and make the "no" pile as deliberate as the "yes" pile. A roadmap that says yes to everything has prioritized nothing.
Workflow
Copy this checklist and track progress:
Prioritize:
- [ ] 1. Frame the goal as a measurable objective
- [ ] 2. Gather the candidates
- [ ] 3. Pick one scoring lens
- [ ] 4. Score honestly, with confidence
- [ ] 5. Sequence, do not just rank
- [ ] 6. Make the cut explicit
- [ ] 7. Name what would change the order
1. Frame the goal as a measurable objective
Priorities are meaningless without the objective they serve, and a vague objective is no better than none: ranking against "grow the business" is unfalsifiable, so any score survives and the cut pile is indefensible. Make the goal checkable before scoring anything.
- Name the metric the work must move. Establish a single success metric for the cycle, ideally a north-star metric: one customer-centric measure of the value users get, a leading indicator of the business outcome, not a raw revenue or activity count. Add 2 to 4 input metrics that drive it (the levers a feature can actually pull, like activation rate or repeat usage). Candidates then compete on how much they move these, not on how they feel.
- Express the goal as an objective with key results. State the qualitative objective and the 2 to 3 key results that say what "moved it" means in numbers (a target on the north-star or its inputs). Each candidate then has to ladder to a key result; an item that maps to no key result is either a missing objective or a cut.
Pull the metric and objective from the user; they live in their head, not the backlog. Without them, every score is arbitrary and the exercise just launders a gut call. If the user cannot name a metric, that gap is the finding to surface, not a reason to invent one.
2. Gather the candidates
List the items in contention, each with enough detail to score: the value it claims, who it is for, the rough effort, and its dependencies. An item too vague to score is not ready to prioritize; send it back to discovery or the spec skill rather than guessing a score for it.
3. Pick one scoring lens
Choose the lens that fits the situation, name why, and do not blend two. Blending (averaging a RICE score with a gut 2x2) hides the actual decision behind false math.
| Lens | Best when | Shape |
|---|---|---|
| Value vs Effort (2x2) | small set, fast triage | plot, take the high-value low-effort quadrant first |
| RICE | feature backlog with measurable reach | Reach x Impact x Confidence / Effort |
| Weighted scoring | several criteria matter unequally | sum of (criterion score x weight): value, strategic fit, risk, effort |
| WSJF / cost of delay | timing and urgency dominate | (value + time-criticality + risk-reduction) / effort |
| Kano | sorting a release into must-haves vs delighters | basic, performance, delighter buckets |
4. Score honestly, with confidence
Score each candidate against the lens and state confidence alongside. Effort and reach are rough by nature (use the estimate-at-scale altitude); a RICE score to two decimals on guessed inputs is theater. A high-impact, low-confidence item earns a discovery spike, not a high rank on faith; sandbagging confidence to high everywhere to avoid that spike is the move to catch in yourself.
5. Sequence, do not just rank
A sorted list is not a roadmap. Re-order the ranked list by:
- Dependencies: foundations first; a high-scoring item blocked by a low-scoring one waits.
- Risk: de-risk the scary bet early, before other work is built on top of an assumption that might not hold.
- Value cadence: ship something users feel soon, rather than a long invisible foundation.
Group the result into now / next / later (or this-cycle / next-cycle / backlog).
6. Make the cut explicit
The "not now" pile is the hardest and most valuable output. State what is deprioritized and the single reason each lost: low value against the goal, blocked, low confidence, or simply outranked by limited capacity. A roadmap without a visible cut list is a wishlist that hides the trade-off it was supposed to make.
7. Name what would change the order
Priorities rest on assumptions: the goal, the value estimates, the confidence. Name the one or two that, if wrong, would reshuffle the list, so the user knows what to watch and when to re-prioritize.
Output shape
A table plus the cut list and the assumptions:
| Item | Score (lens) | Confidence | Bucket | One-line rationale |
|---|
Then: Cut for now: item, reason, one line each. Then: Re-prioritize if: the assumption that would flip it.
Gotchas
- No goal means no priority, and a vague goal is no goal. Scoring without the objective it serves is noise with a number attached, and "grow the business" survives any ranking. The criterion is a success metric and its key results; an item that ladders to none of them is a cut, not a contender.
- The loudest voice is not the criterion. The stakeholder who asks most often, or the HiPPO (highest-paid person's opinion), is one input weighted like any other against the goal, not an override.
- Ranking is not sequencing. A list sorted purely by score ignores dependencies and risk; foundations and scary bets come first regardless of their raw number.
- False precision is theater. Two-decimal RICE on guessed reach and effort projects a rigor the inputs do not have. Round, and carry the confidence instead.
- The cut pile is the deliverable, not the leftover. If everything made the roadmap, no prioritization happened. The discipline is in what you said no to and why.