Task prioritization matrix: How to use it

Prioritization matrices help you evaluate tasks against criteria like urgency, impact, and effort, enabling your team to focus on high-value work.

How a project manager solved prioritization chaos

Meet John, a project manager overwhelmed with feature requests, product improvements, and client demands. Traditional task managers help him track tasks but don't answer the critical question: What should I do first?

John faces common problems:

• Too many urgent and important tasks
• No clear criteria for prioritization
• Budget constraints limiting which tasks to tackle
• Team members choosing tasks based on interest rather than business value

Experienced project managers recommend the Eisenhower approach: tackle urgent and important tasks first. But what if everything feels urgent and important?

The hidden cost of unclear priorities

Without clear prioritization criteria, teams default to personal preferences. They choose the most exciting or understandable tasks rather than the most valuable ones.

This creates several problems:

• Business objectives take a back seat to team interests
• Developers focus on skill-building rather than user needs
• Client needs get neglected
• Valuable projects get delayed

The result? Team members gain experience, add projects to their portfolio, and move on—while the business suffers.

The solution: Use prioritization matrices to evaluate tasks objectively. Popular frameworks include Eisenhower, AARRR, RICE, and WSJF. All share the same principle: evaluate each task against multiple criteria.

How prioritization matrices work

The Eisenhower matrix is the most popular prioritization tool. It evaluates tasks on two axes: urgency and importance.

Traditional approach: Assign binary values (yes/no, 1/0) to each criterion. But not all important tasks are equally important.

Better approach: Use rating scales (5-point or 10-point) to capture nuance:

• Adding user authentication: 5 for importance
• Fixing Safari menu rendering bug: 3 for importance

Even better: Gather input from multiple specialists. Different team members have different perspectives:

• Community managers prioritize the Safari bug (they hear complaints)
• Developers might rate it lower
• Marketing specialists focus on acquisition features

The more diverse the input, the more objective your priorities become.

Advanced prioritization techniques

Project managers who understand objective prioritization often use Google Sheets templates where team members rate tasks in shared cells.

Advanced features:

• Weighted evaluations (experienced professionals' ratings multiplied by 1.2)
• JIRA sync to import tasks automatically
• Custom formulas to calculate priority scores

You can build this yourself with "[framework name] + template + excel" searches, or use specialized tools like Ducalis.

What Ducalis does

Ducalis imports tasks from JIRA, Trello, Asana, and Google Sheets, then syncs them in real-time.

Key features:

• Multiple prioritization frameworks (Eisenhower, RICE, WSJF, custom)
• Team voting on task priorities
• Notifications when ratings diverge significantly
• Custom evaluation criteria and multipliers
• Filters to display specific task subsets

Example: A developer rates the Safari menu bug as low priority, but the community manager (receiving frequent complaints) rates it high. Ducalis highlights this discrepancy so John can investigate.

To implement a low-hanging fruit strategy, filter for tasks with least effort and highest impact—that's your next sprint.

What a priority matrix is

A priority matrix is a management tool that visually divides priorities into four (or more) quadrants.

You can use matrices for personal time management or complex business projects. Most derive from the Eisenhower matrix created for personal tasks.

Chart matrix view

Prioritized backlog in 2x2 matrix list view in Ducalis

When to use a priority matrix

Use a priority matrix when you have limited resources and want to distribute them rationally to maximize performance and ROI.

Placing backlog tasks into four quadrants visualizes their impact on business objectives. Focus team efforts on one quadrant to understand where you're heading, what results to expect, and when.

How the quadrants work

The 2x2 matrix is the most efficient and easiest to use. It consists of two evaluation criteria: one positive (Value, Impact, Revenue) and one negative (Effort, Costs, Risk).

Tasks evaluated by these criteria divide into four quadrants:

Quadrant 4—low positive score and high negative score Thankless Tasks bring little value and cost a lot. Delete them or reconsider the solution to increase value.

Quadrant 1—high positive score and low negative score Quick Wins are low-hanging fruit that deliver positive results immediately. Do these tasks first.

Quadrant 2—high positive score and high negative score Major Projects won't deliver immediate results but are strategically valuable. Consider them for your roadmap.

Quadrant 3—low positive score and low negative score Fill-Ins are cheap solutions with minimal impact. Discuss further and implement only when you have extra resources.

How to create and use a priority matrix

1. Choose criteria based on business needs

Ask yourself: What matters most right now?

• Do you have deadlines where time is critical?
• Must you avoid risks at all costs?

Two criteria work for fast, simple prioritization. Complex projects require multiple criteria covering user behavior stages or business objectives.

At Ducalis, we estimate all vital elements and filter the matrix by the criteria we need to focus on at any given time.

We hide some criteria to consider only tasks influencing the objective that's important now.

2. Decide on the score range

What numbers will your team use when estimating criteria?

Each criterion should use the same scale with clear interpretation. We use 0 to 3:

• 0—no impact
• 1—low impact
• 2—medium impact
• 3—high impact

We use criteria tooltips so we don't have to memorize what scores mean.

3. Estimate tasks with your team

Who participates in the project and can bring a unique perspective? Does the project require only engineers, or designers and copywriters as well?

Evaluating each task with the whole team strengthens shared understanding and delivers the best prioritization results.

In our team:

• Managers evaluate Reach and Revenue
• Engineers and UX/UI evaluate Development Time
• Everyone estimates Activation, Retention, and two product-specific criteria (Speed and Collaboration)

We evaluate most criteria together to maintain shared understanding, and leave specific ones to experts.

4. Study and discuss the results

Why did these features reach the top? Do you agree they're most valuable now and must be implemented?

Never take prioritization results into work unquestioningly. Prioritization is a tool to help you make the right decisions, not make them for you.

Discuss your top priorities with the team at planning meetings. Make sure everyone understands what must be done, why this approach, and why it matters.

Summary

Priority matrices are simple and efficient. Automation tools make them far more powerful. Ducalis lets you create complex prioritization frameworks, use them as weighted decision matrices or action priority matrices, and switch criteria focus instantly.

Key takeaways:

• Without clear priorities, teams forget business objectives and work on personally interesting tasks
• Involve your team in comprehensive task evaluation
• Prioritization matrices work when you can rationally explain why task X is more important than task Y
• Additional criteria like "easy to do" or "increases reach" help, and involving the entire team in evaluation is tremendously valuable
• Ducalis helps you accomplish all these goals

Try our matrix templates. Free to sign up and free to use. No credit cards. Just jump in and prioritize for your growth.