Evaluating Impact vs Effort

Suppose your team brainstorms many good potential solutions to address a particular problem area. But now, you must decide which of these ideas will drive the biggest bang for the buck. You could simply go after the easier tasks first, believing this will drive “quick wins”. That may be a good approach, but what if instead you could leverage a tool that can help to visualize and measure these ideas by comparing a solution’s impact towards resolving the root cause against the amount of effort required.

This is where the Impact vs Effort Matrix enables organizations to:

1) Evaluate risks and rewards of different solutions.
2) Make informed decisions, allocate time & resources accordingly.
3) Avoid getting overwhelmed by complex problems.

In case you missed it, you can view the 30-minute recording of the webinar here.

If you only have a handful of ideas, prioritize using a simple method might be the way to go. But if you have lots of ideas, that’s a great problem to have. Use our “Banded” Impact vs Effort Matrix, which is a handy prioritization tool that enables your team to make informed decisions to act!

To use the “Banded” Impact vs. Effort tool, use the below image as a guide by creating your own 10 x 10 matrix in Excel.

1. Start by writing the word “Impact” in the Y-axis and number from 1 at the bottom to 10 on the top.
2. Type the word “Effort” on the X-axis and number from 1 on the left to 10 on the right.
3. Color-code the Green, Amber & Red cells as shown.