The Effort vs Impact Matrix
The CEO of my company had constructive criticism for my team.
It hurt.
He said we spend too much time on low impact work.
How could that be?
I have a high-functioning team that has an intake process to streamline our work. But my team wasn't critiqued for not streamlining work.
We were critiqued for not making an impact.
Working on low impact, high effort work is a sure way to make your team (and yourself) obsolete.
I'm fixing this with the Effort/Impact Matrix.
My team's problem
Our intake process is good, but not good enough.
We follow the process, put tickets on our backlog, and plan work we will do each sprint. We don't tackle every request that comes in, but we also don't scrutinize each request enough.
That's the problem.
If we don't scrutinize every work item, we'll work on low impact projects.
Work on low impact projects for long enough and your team will be in trouble.
The Effort/Impact Matrix
It's simple.
It's a 2x2 grid with effort and impact on each axis. Then each axis is evaluated from low to high. It looks like this:
It's a simple, well known, and powerful tool to get a handle on the things you're working on.
Without it, you risk wasting time on things that don't matter to the business.
How to use the Effort/Impact Matrix
The way I'm using this matrix is to evaluate every single project and task against the dimensions of effort and impact.
- High impact & high effort > Plan a long-term project
- High impact & low effort > Do it asap
- Low impact & high effort > AVOID
- Low impact & low effort > Also avoid, but do as a "quick win" for stakeholders
When I come across low impact work, I will push back against it, question if we need it, deprioritize it, and revisit it later.
The goal is to minimize low impact work as much as possible.
I won't eliminate low impact projects, but minimizing them will put my team in a better place than we are today.
All leaders (i.e. you), are responsible for maximizing the team's impact.
The Effort/Impact matrix is a first step to get there.
I'm implementing this on my team and I can help you implement it on yours. Just send an email to anthony@anthonysoltero.com with the subject line "MATRIX" and we'll talk about how we can work together to make sure you're doing important work that will be recognized.