Value Versus Effort

Who this is for

Business Analysts, Product Analysts, Product Owners, and anyone who must quickly sort a backlog to maximize impact under limited capacity.

Prerequisites

• Basic understanding of user stories or tasks.
• Familiarity with estimation scales (e.g., story points or T-shirt sizes).
• Comfort discussing value with stakeholders and effort with engineers.

Why this matters

In real projects you will often be asked to:

• Prepare the next sprint or release cut when capacity is tight.
• Compare requests from multiple stakeholders and defend the choice.
• Unblock teams by finding quick wins that move metrics fast.
• Communicate trade-offs clearly to leadership.

The Value vs Effort method gives you a fast, transparent way to make and explain these decisions.

Concept explained simply

Value vs Effort ranks backlog items by how much benefit they create (Value) divided by how hard they are to ship (Effort). You can:

• Compute a simple score: Priority = Value / Effort.
• Or place items on a 2×2: High/Low Value vs High/Low Effort.

Mental model

Think of a lemonade stand. You want changes that sell more lemonade (Value) and take little time or cost (Effort). Items with high Value and low Effort are your quick wins. Large, valuable items are big bets—worth doing but planned more carefully.

Scales and rubric

• Use a 1–5 scale for both Value and Effort across all items in the session.
• Keep it relative: you compare items to each other, not to perfection.
• For consistency, define Value as the sum of up to four parts (0–5 each, but cap total to 5 by mapping to the 1–5 scale): user impact, business/revenue impact, risk reduction/enablement, strategic alignment. Normalize to 1–5.
• Effort is relative complexity: use story points or T-shirt sizes mapped to 1–5 (XS=1, S=2, M=3, L=4, XL=5).

Ready-made 1–5 rubric you can reuse

Value (pick the best fitting band):

• 1 = Niche or cosmetic; no measurable metric moves.
• 2 = Minor improvement; local efficiency or small UX fix.
• 3 = Noticeable improvement; affects a key step or a small segment.
• 4 = Strong impact; moves a key metric for a broad segment.
• 5 = Game changer; revenue, conversion, retention, or risk avoidance at scale.

Effort (relative complexity):

• 1 = Trivial: 1–2 small tasks; low uncertainty.
• 2 = Small: a few tasks; low-to-moderate uncertainty.
• 3 = Medium: cross-component; some unknowns.
• 4 = Large: multiple systems; notable unknowns.
• 5 = Very large: multi-sprint or heavy discovery needed.

Run a 30-minute scoring session

1. Prep (5 min): Pick 8–12 items, define the rubric, and set the scale (1–5).
2. Value first (10 min): With stakeholders, assign Value to each item quickly. Avoid wordsmithing; keep it relative.
3. Effort next (10 min): With engineers, assign Effort using the same scale.
4. Compute and sort (5 min): Calculate Value/Effort, sort descending, and check sanity (dependencies, deadlines).

Worked examples

Example 1 — Checkout address autocomplete

• Value: 4 (reduces drop-off, improves speed)
• Effort: 2
• Score: 4 / 2 = 2.0 → Quick win

Example 2 — Enterprise data export API

• Value: 5 (unlocks enterprise deals)
• Effort: 5 (auth, throttling, docs)
• Score: 5 / 5 = 1.0 → Big bet; schedule intentionally

Example 3 — Fix flaky tracking event

• Value: 5 (restores analytics; reduces decision risk)
• Effort: 1
• Score: 5 / 1 = 5.0 → Do first

Example 4 — Dark mode request

• Value: 2 (nice-to-have for a subset)
• Effort: 5
• Score: 2 / 5 = 0.4 → Deprioritize for now

Exercises

Do these to practice. You can compare to the provided solutions.

Exercise 1 — Score a mini backlog (e-commerce)

Items:

• A. One-click re-order for past purchases
• B. Add PayPal as a payment method
• C. Fix image compression on product pages
• D. Improve fraud checks on high-value orders
• E. Admin toggle for featured products

Steps:

1. Assign Value (1–5) and Effort (1–5) to each item.
2. Compute Score = Value / Effort.
3. Sort by Score. Flag dependencies or deadlines if any.

• [ ] I used the same scale consistently.
• [ ] I wrote a one-line rationale per score.
• [ ] I checked for dependencies or fixed dates.

Exercise 2 — Build a team rubric and test it

1. Create a Value rubric with up to four components that matter to your product (e.g., conversion, retention, risk reduction, strategic alignment). Map the total to 1–5.
2. Map your team’s story point sizes to 1–5 Effort.
3. Run a 10-minute dry run on 5 items. Capture disagreements and how you resolved them.

• [ ] Value has clear definitions per level.
• [ ] Effort mapping is agreed across engineers.
• [ ] Disagreement rules are written (e.g., pick the higher Effort if uncertain).

Common mistakes and self-check

• Mixing units: Using hours for some items and story points for others. Self-check: Are all Effort scores on the same 1–5 scale?
• Value inflation: Everything becomes a 5. Self-check: Can two 5s be clearly distinguished from a 4? If not, tighten definitions.
• Ignoring dependencies: A high-score item blocked by a prerequisite. Self-check: Mark blocked items and adjust plan order.
• Forgetting non-feature work: Migrations, observability, or compliance. Self-check: Include enablers and apply the same rubric.
• Static scores: Not updating after discovery. Self-check: Revisit V/E after spikes or new data.
• Over-precision: Debating 3.2 vs 3.4. Self-check: Use integers 1–5; speed beats false accuracy.

Practical projects

• Create a live Value vs Effort dashboard (spreadsheet) for your current backlog, auto-sorting by score and highlighting quick wins.
• Run a cross-functional prioritization workshop for 10 items and publish a one-page summary with the final order and rationale.
• Re-score a past release’s backlog and compare predicted priority vs actual impact. Write 3 insights you’d apply next time.

Learning path

• Start: Value vs Effort (this lesson) to build quick, transparent prioritization.
• Next: Cost of Delay and simple WSJF to include time sensitivity.
• Then: Dependency mapping and capacity planning to improve feasibility.
• Finally: Outcome tracking to validate that high-score items delivered impact.

Mini challenge

You have one sprint (capacity ~10 points). Score and pick a slice:

• 1) Onboarding tooltip (Value 3–4?),
• 2) Reduce API timeouts (Value 5?),
• 3) Add CSV export (Value 3?),
• 4) Update billing library (Value 4?),
• 5) Improve search ranking (Value 4?).

Assign Effort 1–5, compute Score, and propose a sprint selection explaining trade-offs and any dependencies.

Next steps

• Use the rubric in your next planning meeting.
• Track one metric moved by a chosen quick win.
• Refresh scores after discovery or after a spike.

Quick Test is available to everyone. Only logged-in users will have their progress saved.