Prioritization Criteria

A prioritization criterion is a principle by which board users evaluate an issue’s priority.

Accessing the Criteria Settings

Criteria settings can be accessed through the Backlog, Evaluation, and Matrix pages.

On any of these pages, click Criteria in the top right corner. 

You will find two sections under the Criteria settings page

• Board users
• Prioritization Framework 

Board Users 

You can see all the users on your board under the Users section.

The Prioritization Framework

The prioritization framework you will find on your board is the one you chose when you created the board. This framework can be edited. You can:

• Add new criteria of your own.
• Archive the current criteria.
• Duplicate criteria.
• Pick a new prioritization framework from our template library. 

Creating New Criterion

1. To start creating a new criterion, click + Criterion.

2. Type the name of your criterion. You can also choose from our list of suggested criteria. 

3. If users on the board will evaluate the criterion, then you need to assign the estimators responsible for scoring using this criterion. 

4. If you decide to use a custom field from your task tracker, then make sure that the tracker is connected to the board.

5. Set if it’s a Value or an Effort criterion.

This is important for the Matrix quadrants and for the formulas ‘Value Product divided by Effort‘ and ‘Value Sum divided by Effort‘.
Find more about the Matrix and the Formulas.

6. If you do not want the criterion you are creating to be considered when calculating the Total scores, you can check Ignore. Read more about ignoring creating in the calculation of the Total score here.

7. Set the Weight according to how significant this criterion is relative to other criteria.

You can use any positive or negative whole or fractional number. But don’t use negative numbers for Effort criteria if you’re using the ‘Value Product divided by Effort‘ or ‘Value Sum divided by Effort‘ formula.

8. Set the scores. Choose the scoring method you want to use to score your issues (Range, Sequence, Percent, or Positive scale).

9. You can pick any of the given presets, which include some popular scoring techniques like the Fibonacci series.

10. Add the Criterion Description to help your teammates better understand the criterion when evaluating.
11. Click Add Criterion.

Using a Custom Fields as Criterion

Instead of creating a criterion from scratch or using the criteria from our list, you can create criteria using the custom fields you import from the task tracker you connected with Ducalis. You can use the data in these fields to prioritize your backlog. Read more. 

Picking a Prioritization Framework from the Template Library 

Instead of creating a framework from scratch, you can pick one from our template library. You can edit the template you pick so that it suits your needs. 

Read more about picking a prioritization framework here. 

Edit, Duplicate, or Archive a Criterion

1. The properties of the criteria can be edited. To do so, click Edit 

2. In case you want to copy the configuration of a particular criterion to another criterion, you can duplicate the criterion you want to copy the configurations from. 

3. If you want to hide a criterion from the framework without deleting it completely, you can archive it.

4. Once archived, if you decide that you no longer need it, you can delete the criterion.

Old Versions Backups

A record of all the edits made is found under Criteria backups. There, you can also find backups of your old criteria configurations. The latest previous version for each configuration is kept indefinitely, and all the other versions before it are kept for ten days.

You can restore the old versions.

What’s Next?

Now that you have set up your prioritization framework, you can choose the formula combination you want to use to calculate your Total scores.

More about the Total score formulas.

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact us in the chat in the bottom right corner.