Creating a Prioritisation Agreement

There was strong reason to do this because we had a team where individuals came together from different parts of a business, each with their own KPIs and only a light understanding of each other’s roles.

What’s a Prioritisation Agreement?

A Prioritisation Agreement is a simple document that captures how your team will decide what to work on. It’s created during project inception or kickoff and guides prioritization decisions throughout the project.

It answers questions like:

• What makes work “high priority”?
• If two pieces of work are equally important, how do we choose?
• Who has authority to set priorities?
• How do we handle priority disagreements?

Why It Matters

Alignment

When everyone understands the prioritization criteria, you avoid constant politics. “We decided that feature X goes first because it scores high on criteria Y.”

Faster Decisions

Instead of debating each prioritization decision from first principles, you apply the agreed criteria.

Reduced Conflict

When priorities come from explicit criteria, it’s less personal. “The criteria said to do this” is different from “I think this is more important.”

Project Focus

When the team understands what matters most, they can maintain focus even when pressure increases.

Creating a Prioritisation Agreement

Here’s a workshop process for creating one with your team:

Step 1: Identify Stakeholders (15 minutes)

List everyone with a stake in priorities:

• Product Owner
• Project Manager
• Team members
• Business stakeholders
• Customer representatives
• External teams the work impacts

Decide who needs to be in the room for this workshop.

Step 2: Articulate Competing Interests (20 minutes)

Each key stakeholder shares what they care about:

• Sales: “We need to prioritize features that will close deals”
• Engineering: “We need to build stable foundations”
• Customers: “We need fixes to our immediate pain points”
• Finance: “We need features that generate revenue”

Write these down without judgment. The point is to understand the different perspectives.

Step 3: Find Common Ground (20 minutes)

Despite different priorities, usually there’s common ground:

• “We all want to deliver customer value”
• “We all want the product to be stable”
• “We all want to be efficient with our effort”

Look for the higher-level goals everyone can agree on.

Step 4: Define Criteria (30 minutes)

Create a prioritisation framework. For example:

Must Have (Do First):

• Blocks other critical work
• High customer impact
• Strategic to business
• Required for launch

Should Have (Do Next):

• Good customer value
• Moderate effort
• Supports strategy

Could Have (Later):

• Nice to have
• Can wait
• Lower customer impact

Or use weighted criteria:

• Customer Value (weight: 40%)
• Business Value (weight: 30%)
• Implementation Risk (weight: 20%)
• Effort Required (weight: 10%)

Step 5: Test the Criteria (15 minutes)

Take a few real stories or requirements from your backlog. Apply the criteria. Would you prioritize them the same way you currently do?

If not, adjust the criteria until it feels right.

Step 6: Decision Authority (10 minutes)

Discuss and agree:

• Who has final authority on priorities?
• How do we handle ties?
• How do we handle priority disagreements?
• How often do we revisit priorities?

Step 7: Document (15 minutes)

Write it up in a simple document. One page is often fine. Include:

• The criteria
• Examples of how you’d apply them
• Who decides
• How often you revisit

Step 8: Commit (5 minutes)

Have people sign or formally agree to the Prioritisation Agreement. This sounds formal, but it matters. The commitment makes it stick.

Example Prioritisation Agreement

Our Prioritisation Principle: We prioritize work that delivers customer value with sustainable effort, advances our strategic goals, and maintains system health.

Our Criteria:

1. Impact on Customer (40 points): How many customers are affected? How much does it solve their problem?
2. Strategic Alignment (30 points): Does this advance our business strategy?
3. Implementation Risk (20 points): How risky is this? What could go wrong? (Lower risk scores higher)
4. Effort (10 points): How much work is it? (Lower effort scores higher)

How We Apply It:

• Score each item 1-10 on each criteria
• Multiple by the weight
• Total score determines priority order
• Quarterly prioritization review

Decision Authority:

• Product Owner has final prioritization authority
• Priority disagreements are discussed in weekly steering meetings
• Urgent customer issues can be elevated to Project Manager for immediate consideration

How Often We Revisit:

• Quarterly roadmap review
• Weekly team standup may identify need for urgent adjustments
• Customer issues can be escalated for immediate reassessment

Benefits

When teams create and use a Prioritisation Agreement:

• Clarity: Everyone knows how priorities are set
• Alignment: Fewer debates about what to do next
• Efficiency: Decisions are faster when criteria are clear
• Fairness: It feels fair because everyone agreed to the rules
• Reduced Politics: Less “who can convince the boss” and more “what do the criteria say”

Living Document

Your Prioritisation Agreement isn’t set in stone. Quarterly, review it:

• Is it working?
• Are the criteria still relevant?
• Do we need to adjust weights?
• Are there new stakeholder perspectives we should include?

Adjust as you learn what works.

Try It

If you’re starting a project or feeling constant friction around priorities, run this workshop. An hour or two invested in creating alignment will pay dividends throughout the project.

You’ll have fewer arguments about what to work on next. And when people disagree, you have a framework to talk about it.