Distributed Collaborative Prioritization Using Miro

Distributed teams need good tools to help with prioritization work.  Here is an (anonymized) example of a Miro layout that was used for an actual distributed collaborative prioritization workshop.  The total time for the workshop was about one hour, and there was an additional time of about 30 minutes to set up the board.  The setup included the layout of the board and the transcription of the options onto virtual stickies (all the same color at the start of the workshop).  The team was already connected on Zoom for video discussion, and this board was shared with members of the team by the business stakeholder.

Distributed Collaborative Prioritization Process

On the left (the vertical axis) we have business value.  On the bottom (the horizontal axis) we have urgency.  And effort is coded using color.  The question was: what options should we work on next? (Click on the image to see the board full-size.)

The team started by briefly reviewing the options (the virtual stickies).  This review took about 10 minutes.

Then the team started moving the stickies onto the board.  Anyone was allowed to move any option at any time.  There was a bit of discussion during this movement which included questions clarifying options, a little bit of splitting or merging of options, and some minor re-writes of the text describing the options.

After about 10 minutes, the movement of options slowed down and the discussion switched to focus on specific items and doing a “sanity check” on their location.  In particular, the items at the top right need additional justification as they are the highest overall priority taking value and urgency into account… gotta be sure about those ones!  This sanity check took another 15 minutes.

The team then was invited to color-code the stickies based on the effort scale.  The team “argued” by switching items back and forth between different colours and verbally sharing their thoughts about the effort.  Just like with the placement of items for prioritization, the effort estimation also included some sanity check discussion focussing on the “huge” effort items.

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