Priority Pyramid

This is a simple tool in order to help prioritizing tasks the at hand. Think of it as a priority list, but with the added benefit that the pointy top focuses the team on working on a few things at a time. Especially useful for small teams, it doesn’t work as well if your team is capable of multitasking.

The pyramid contains the upcoming tasks for the project or the issues you are trying to address. It has four levels:

• P1 — top priority; what we’re actively working on.
• P2 — Next level down, these are the tasks that are contenders for the next top level once the team has extra bandwidth
• P3 — The bottom of the pyramid, where the next upcoming tasks live
• Backlog — This is where we put all the other tasks that we won’t be working on in the near future. We don’t put those in the pyramid, but leave them to the side.

Each level has an associated number called the WIP-limit (work-in-progress limit), which is the cap on the maximum number of tasks that can be in that level; it should go down on as the pyramid goes up.

Tasks/issues in P1 cannot be changed back down; once you’re working on it, you should be comitted; however tasks in the other levels can be moved if needed.

Ideally this pyramid should be up and visible for the whole team and should be reviewed regularly. Do not put it up and then erase it; it really helps to have it as a reminder of what is left to do.

First I heard of it was from Stepahnie Werli at BrainScribble although it’s defintiley older.

1. On a whiteboard, draw a triangle with three levels
2. Write down all the tasks/issues on sitckie notes
3. One by one, discuss with the team which level they fall under (or if they should be in the backlog)
4. Leave it up! Review regularly

Let’s imagine we’re working on a third person puzzle-platformer in the same vein of old 90’s mascot platformers.

We’re making a huge simplification here, but once you’ve started making tasks for the team, if you need to prioritize, it could look like this:

Notice how the tasks per priority tier are never larger than the WIP-Limit.

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