assignment group

Use Weighted Assignment Groups in Your Canvas Course

by Thomas Keith | Aug 26, 2022 | Canvas , Canvas Features/Functions , How-tos , Pedagogy

Introduction

• Create an Assignment Group

Weight Assignment Groups

Use weighted assignment groups to calculate the total grade, drop a low score from an assignment group, further resources and getting help.

It is good pedagogical practice to maintain a Canvas Gradebook that gives an accurate reflection of your students’ performance. Students frequently consult their grades in Canvas to get a sense of how they are doing in your course and of areas in which they need to improve. You can use weighted Assignment Groups in your Canvas course to help ensure that the grade calculated by Canvas is indicative of students’ actual performance.

Create An Assignment Group

An Assignment Group in Canvas is a means of sorting assignments according to the categories to which they belong in your syllabus. By default, new assignments created in your Canvas course will be added to a catch-all group called Assignments . (Note that “assignments” in this context refers to anything that is graded; this can be an Assignment proper, a Quiz, or a graded Discussion.)

You can create a new Assignment Group by going to the Assignments tab in your course and clicking the gray +Group button at the upper right.

It is a good idea to give your group a name that reflects the assessment categories on your syllabus. For example, if the group contains quizzes that are given each week of the quarter, you might call it Weekly Quizzes .

Once a group has been created, there are two ways to add assignments to it:

Assignment Groups are most useful when used to weight grades. With weighted Assignment Groups, you can make the organization of your assignments in Canvas match the organization used on your syllabus. You also have greater flexibility than is offered by weighting each individual assignment: if an assignment needs to be dropped or added, you can simply remove it from/add it to the appropriate assignment group, and Canvas will automatically recalculate the final grade accordingly.

For the remainder of this post, we will use as an example a course in which the grading is as follows:

• Five short quizzes: 20% of the final grade
• One midterm exam: 30% of the final grade
• One final exam: 40% of the final grade
• Attendance and participation: 10% of the final grade

To begin, the instructor creates four assignment groups, named Short Quizzes , Midterm , Final Exam , and Attendance and Participation .

She then clicks the column of three dots at the upper right and chooses Assignment Groups Weight .

She then checks the box next to Weight final grade based on assignment groups . This allows her to set the percentage weight for each assignment group.

Note that Canvas shows the instructor that the assignment groups add up to 100%. It is important to check this, as Canvas will not stop you if your groups add up to less than or greater than 100%.

Once the instructor has weighted her groups to her satisfaction, she clicks the maroon Save button. Canvas then indicates across from each assignment group’s name the percentage value of the total grade that it carries.

The instructor can now create her assignments and add them to the appropriate assignment groups by one of the two methods enumerated above.

An important caveat: If an assignment group contains more than one assignment, it is important that all assignments have the same point value for Canvas’ math to work out correctly. This avoids the risk of “double weighting,” which will occur if assignments within a group have different point values. For example: if a quiz worth 5 points and a quiz worth 50 points are placed in the same assignment group, the latter quiz will be worth ten times as much in Canvas’ calculations, which will greatly skew the result. In our example course, the instructor has avoided this risk by creating five quizzes within the Short Quizzes group, each of which is worth three points.

The Midterm and Final Exam groups each contain only one assignment. This can be an assignment of type Online Assignment if the instructor wishes her students to submit it through Canvas, or it can be an assignment of type On Paper if students will hand in a physical exam paper.

For the Attendance and Participation group, the instructor creates an assignment of type No Submission .

Remember that in Canvas, there is a one-to-one correspondence between assignments and columns in the Gradebook. Thus, if you wish to create a column for (e.g.) students’ attendance/participation grade, it is necessary to create a corresponding assignment. By making it of type No Submission , the instructor has ensured that students do not need to hand in any work, while still creating a Gradebook column where the grade is recorded.

Note also that if students need to submit work that will not be graded, such as an outline for an upcoming paper, you can create an assignment of submission type Online Assignment and check the box Do not count this assignment toward the final grade in the assignment options area.

Using weighted assignment groups allows Canvas to do your math for you. A column will appear in the Gradebook for each assignment group. The Total column will be calculated by multiplying the value of each column by its percentage weight and adding the results. In the case of the student below, the grade is calculated as follows:

Short Quizzes: 12 out of 15 possible points = 80 * 0.2 = 16

Midterm Exam: 90 out of 100 possible points = 90*0.3 = 27

Final Exam: 80 out of 100 possible points = 80*0.4 = 32

Attendance and Participation: 100 out of 100 possible points = 100*0.1 = 10

Total: 16+27+32+10 = 85

If you wish, you can set an assignment group to drop one or more low scores (or high scores) automatically. To do this, go to the group within the Assignments tab and click on the column of three dots across from its name to open a dialog box. Then enter the number of low or high scores you wish to drop and click Save .

You can also specify that an assignment should never be dropped by clicking the blue +Add an assignment link next to Never drop: and choosing its name from the drop-down that appears.

For more information, please see:

• How do I weight the final course grade based on assignment groups?
• How do I create rules for an assignment group?

If you have additional questions, Academic Technology Solutions is here to help. You can attend our workshops to learn more about Canvas and other tools for teaching with technology. You can also drop into our Office Hours (virtual and in-person) to ask any questions you may have; no appointment is required.

(Cover Photo by Piret Ilver on Unsplash )

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TC Technology Knowledge Base

• Add an assignment to an Assignment Group in Canvas

Updated on Aug 08, 2024

You can use Canvas's Assignment Group feature to weigh different types of assignments in your course.

1. Log into the myTC portal.

Access the myTC portal.

2. Click on the Canvas icon in the top right corner.

3. Click Dashboard in the Global Navigation menu.

4. Click on your course card.

1. Click Assignments in the Course Navigation Menu.

2. Click on the name of the assignment that you would like to add to an Assignment Group.

3. When the assignment opens, click Edit.

4. In the Assignment Group section, click the arrow to view the drop-down menu. Click to select the group for the assignment. Alternatively, you may create a new group.

5. Add assignment details as needed, and click Save.

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• Assignment Groups

How Do I Use Assignment Groups in Canvas?

In Canvas, assignment groups allow you to organize your assignments into discrete groups. For example, you may want to group all the essay assignments in your course within one assignment group titled ‘Essays’.

Assignment groups allow you to leverage a weighted grade scheme in your Canvas course. A weighted grade scheme allows you to distribute percentages of a student’s final grade across these assignment groups. Following our previous example, you may want the Essays group to account for 30% of the final grade. 

By default, Grade weighting is turned off for all Canvas courses. To turn on Grade weighting, please follow Canvas’ tutorial for weighting final grades based on Assignment Groups.

How do grade weights get distributed across an Assignment Group?

In Canvas, the weight of an assignment group is distributed proportionally across the assignments inside it. Because of this, assignments worth different points will be weighted differently if they are in the same assignment group.

Here’s an example of an assignment group in Canvas. This group is worth 30% of the total grade and contains three assignments with different point values. The table further below outlines how the assignment group weight of 30% is distributed across the three Assignments.

Here, since Essay Two is out of 200 points, it will count two times more than Essays One and Three.

***assignment group weight distribution for assignments with differing point totals.

If you want all assignments within a given assignment group to be worth the same weight, you have two options:

1. Make all assignments inside an assignment group worth the same number of points, as shown below.

***In this scenario, we have changed Essay Two’s point value from 200 to 100 points. Since all point values in this assignment Group are the same, each Assignment will be worth the same, 10% in this case.

2. Create new assignment groups for any outlier assignments if you cannot or do not want to change their point value.

***In this scenario, we have not changed Essay Two’s point values, so we will need to put it in its own assignment group worth 10% and change the first assignment group to be worth 20% so that all Essays are now worth 10% of the total grade.

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Canvas assignment groups.

The Assignments page is arguably the most central to successful Canvas course utilization.

• It controls the columns in the gradebook and gradebook calculations.
• It displays all things gradable, including assignments, gradable discussions, and quizzes. Each can be created in Assignments.
• Dates used in the syllabus and calendar are rapidly edited in Assignments.

Use assignment groups to achieve:

• Assignment categorization
• Drop lowest  n  scores
• Drop highest  n  scores
• Never drop  x  assignment
• Weighting of grades

Canvas creates a group called "Assignments" by default, but you can change the group title or create additional groups. Because the default group is Assignments, Canvas places all assignment types into that group. When you are creating a new assignment, graded discussion, or quiz you will have the option to designate it as belonging to a previously created assignment group.

On This Page

Create an Assignment Group

Move an assignment between groups, weighting assignment groups, video tutorial, assignment page icons, filter the gradebook by assignment group.

On the Assignment page, click + Group

In the Add Assignment Group box, type the name of the group and click Save

Click on the double column of dots next to an assignment and drag to a new group.

Or, click on the three dots to the right of the assignment and click on Move To... then choose the desired assignment group and location.

Click on the assignment settings, then choose Assignment Groups Weight from the menu

Check the box to "Weight final grade based on assignment groups" and then enter the percentage assigned for each group

(weights should typically equal 100, but can exceed 100 for extra credit)

This short video will walk you through the process of creating weighted assignment groups in your Canvas course.

On the Grades page, click on the View dropdown menu and choose the Filters option

Then, select Assignment Groups from the menu

A new dropdown menu will appear at the top of the page

Click on All Assignment Groups to select a certain group of assignments you would like to see

Eberly Center

Teaching excellence & educational innovation, what are the benefits of group work.

“More hands make for lighter work.” “Two heads are better than one.” “The more the merrier.”

These adages speak to the potential groups have to be more productive, creative, and motivated than individuals on their own.

Benefits for students

Group projects can help students develop a host of skills that are increasingly important in the professional world (Caruso & Woolley, 2008; Mannix & Neale, 2005). Positive group experiences, moreover, have been shown to contribute to student learning, retention and overall college success (Astin, 1997; Tinto, 1998; National Survey of Student Engagement, 2006).

Properly structured, group projects can reinforce skills that are relevant to both group and individual work, including the ability to: 

• Break complex tasks into parts and steps
• Plan and manage time
• Refine understanding through discussion and explanation
• Give and receive feedback on performance
• Challenge assumptions
• Develop stronger communication skills.

Group projects can also help students develop skills specific to collaborative efforts, allowing students to...

• Tackle more complex problems than they could on their own.
• Delegate roles and responsibilities.
• Share diverse perspectives.
• Pool knowledge and skills.
• Hold one another (and be held) accountable.
• Receive social support and encouragement to take risks.
• Develop new approaches to resolving differences. 
• Establish a shared identity with other group members.
• Find effective peers to emulate.
• Develop their own voice and perspectives in relation to peers.

While the potential learning benefits of group work are significant, simply assigning group work is no guarantee that these goals will be achieved. In fact, group projects can – and often do – backfire badly when they are not designed , supervised , and assessed in a way that promotes meaningful teamwork and deep collaboration.

Benefits for instructors

Faculty can often assign more complex, authentic problems to groups of students than they could to individuals. Group work also introduces more unpredictability in teaching, since groups may approach tasks and solve problems in novel, interesting ways. This can be refreshing for instructors. Additionally, group assignments can be useful when there are a limited number of viable project topics to distribute among students. And they can reduce the number of final products instructors have to grade.

Whatever the benefits in terms of teaching, instructors should take care only to assign as group work tasks that truly fulfill the learning objectives of the course and lend themselves to collaboration. Instructors should also be aware that group projects can add work for faculty at different points in the semester and introduce its own grading complexities .

Astin, A. (1993). What matters in college? Four critical years revisited. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Caruso, H.M., & Wooley, A.W. (2008). Harnessing the power of emergent interdependence to promote diverse team collaboration. Diversity and Groups. 11, 245-266.

Mannix, E., & Neale, M.A. (2005). What differences make a difference? The promise and reality of diverse teams in organizations. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 6(2), 31-55.

National Survey of Student Engagement Report. (2006). http://nsse.iub.edu/NSSE_2006_Annual_Report/docs/NSSE_2006_Annual_Report.pdf .

Tinto, V. (1987). Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Create group assignments or assign to individual students

Create an assignment in Microsoft Teams for Education and assign it to individual or small groups of students in a class. Groups turn in one copy of the assignment that can be graded separately or together.

Create a new assignment

Navigate to your desired class team and select Assignments .

Select Create > Assignment .

Create a group assignment

If you chose Randomly group students: 

Enter number of groups, then select Create groups .

When everything looks good, select Done . If you decide you need more edits, select Groups of students again.

Finish adding details to your assignment, then select Assign . Note that once an assignment has been distributed to students, you can no longer edit groups.  

If you chose Manually group students:

Select Create groups .

Edit the default group name, if desired.

Select Create .

When you're done, select + New group  and repeat Steps 2 and 3 until all students have been assigned to a group.

Finish adding details to your assignment, then select Assign . Note that once an assignment has been distributed to students, you can no longer edit groups.

Assign to individual students

Select the student dropdown under Assign to . By default, All Students will be selected. Select student names or type to search for a student.

Note:  You can only assign work to individual students in one class at a time.

Once you've selected the students, finish adding details to your assignment.

Select Assign . The students you chose will be notified of their new assignment.

Create an assignment

Grade an assignment

Edit an assignment

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Create an assignment group

Create an Operational Technology (OT) specific assignment group to assign to OT incident records.

Role required: admin

The Assignment Group field in an OT incident record only shows assignment groups with the type OT. This helps separate Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT) incidents.

You can create OT-specific assignment groups that you want visible on an OT incident record.

• \n Navigate to All > User Administration > Groups . \n
• \n Select New . \n

• \n Select Submit . \n

Now, the OT-specific assignment group is visible on the incident record.

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Create Group Assignments

You are viewing Ultra Course View content

Your institution controls which tools are available in the Original Course View . Assignments are always available to instructors in the Ultra Course View .

Before assigning group work

You don't want students to see group activities as busy work. If group work doesn't enhance your learning objectives and provide value, consider alternative teaching techniques. Only use group work for projects an individual student can't do as well alone and finish in the intended amount of time.

Research shows that students work harder when others rely on them. To encourage this interdependence, create group assignments that require the students to divide the work to meet the goal, question and challenge each other's ideas, and share feedback and encouragement.

Before incorporating group work into your course, consider these questions:

• Will the group work further my course objectives?
• What introductory material or group resource information can I provide to help students succeed?
• How will the groups be formed?
• Will students be involved in planning the groups?
• How will I assess students' learning and maintain individual accountability? Will I require a group deliverable?
• How will I handle concerns and problems?

Source: "44 Benefits of Collaborative Learning." gdrc.org n.d. Web. 3 Jan. 2020.

Watch a video about group assignments

The following narrated video provides a visual and auditory representation of some of the information included on this page. For a detailed description of what is portrayed in the video, open the video on YouTube , navigate to More actions , and select Open transcript .


Video: Group Assignments shows how you can deliver assignments to groups of students.

About group assignments

Collaborative learning offers many benefits over traditional instruction. Studies show that when students work as a team, they develop positive attitudes, solve problems more effectively, and experience a greater sense of accomplishment.

You create a group assignment nearly the same way you create assignments for students to complete individually. Gradebook items are created automatically.

If students with accommodations are in a group, all students in that group inherit the accommodation for that item. For example, you create a group assignment and one group member has a due date accommodation. That group's work isn't marked late if they submit after the due date.

More on accommodations

For a specific group assignment or group test, you can give an individual group an exception for extended access only. Multiple attempts aren't allowed for group assessments at this time.

More on group exceptions

Students can hold virtual meetings with their group members if Collaborate Ultra is enabled at your institution and you enable conversations for the assignment.

More on using Collaborate Ultra in your course

Create a group assignment

On the New Assignment page, select the Settings icon to open the Assignment Settings panel. Provide a due date and select the settings you want to apply to the group assignment:

• You can allow class conversations for a group assignment. Students can choose between a conversation with the class as a whole or among only their group members.
• You can also choose to collect submissions offline that don't require groups to upload submissions . You can add instructions, files, a rubric, and goals so the groups can prepare for the offline work. You can also enable conversations for offline work.
• You can issue an access code to control when groups may submit a group assignment. At this time, access codes are generated randomly by the system. You can't customize the access codes.

At this time, you can't create a group assignment with multiple attempts, a time limit, hidden names, or with parallel grading.

Select Assign to groups .

Create groups

On the groups page, a partial list of your students appears in the Unassigned students section. Select Show All to view the entire list. You can create multiple groups to deliver the assignment to. You can also select the plus sign below the student list to create a custom group and add students.

Your teaching assistants can create and manage group enrollments. Your graders can only grade group assignments.

Students who aren't assigned to a group won't have access to the group assignment because it won't appear on their Course Content pages. If you ask students to self-enroll in a group, they can't access the assignment until they join a group.

You can divide your students among groups in these ways:

Randomly assign

Self-enrollment, reuse groups.

To help you with the division and selection of students for the group or groups you are creating, you can paginate through students who aren't currently assigned to a group. You can also move to the top of the page when there are enough students shown on the screen.

The students' avatars in this view are hidden, to help people with vision impairment navigate through cards more efficiently.

You can also use the search bar to find a specific student or filter the display of unassigned students by search criteria. The bar shows predicted results and will display only students pending to be assigned to a group.

Custom groups

You can create as many groups as you want, with any number of students in each group. You can also create new groups or remove groups based on how many you want for this assignment.

• In the Group students menu, select Custom .
• Select each student's name to select them at the same time. Select a student's name again to remove the selection.
• After you select the students, open the menu next to one of their names and select Create a new group . You can also move multiple students to a group listed in the menu. You can't move students to a group with submitted work.
• Edit the group name if you want to change the default naming.

Select the plus sign wherever you want to add another group. You can also repeat steps 2-5.

At this time, if you save a Custom group set, return to the group set, and select Custom again, your groups are deleted.

Students are randomly assigned to the number of groups you choose. You need at least four students so the system can randomly assign students to at least two groups.

• In the Group students menu, select Randomly assign .
• In the Number of groups menu, select how many groups to create. You need to create at least two. Students are equally assigned to the number of groups you choose. Be careful as you make changes before you save. If you create four groups with titles and optional descriptions, and then use the menu and change to six groups, your groups redistribute and the titles and descriptions are removed.
• To remove all students from the current group set, select Unassign All at the top of the page. The setting changes to Custom if you move students to different groups after they're grouped and before you save.
• Edit each group name if you want to change the default naming.
• Optionally, add group descriptions that only appear to you at this time. You have no limit on the number of characters.

Select the plus sign wherever you want to create a group in addition to the groups the system created.

You can ask students to self-enroll in groups to complete a group assignment. Only students may join.

Students see the group assignment on the Course Content page and a link to enroll. You can also add an enrollment period. Students are notified when the enrollment deadline approaches. When the enrollment period ends, students can no longer join groups, and they aren’t enrolled automatically. Students need to ask you to add them so they can view the group assignment. You can add unenrolled students to the groups you choose if those groups haven’t submitted work.

You can't add to or change membership in groups with submitted work. You also can’t delete groups with submitted work.

If you want to release the group assignment in the future, students can't access the content, but they can join a group.

If you choose to release the group assignment based on performance on another item, students can’t access the content until they achieve a certain score on an item or gradebook column. However, if one of the group members meets the performance criterion, that member can submit on behalf of the entire group. Any member who hasn’t met the performance criterion also receives the grade you assign. You can change individual members’ grades before you post the grades.

More on assigning a different grade to group

On the groups page, you can create as many groups as you want, with any number of students in each group. You can also create new groups or remove groups based on how many you want for this assignment. You need to create at least two self-enrollment groups.

A partial list of your students appears in the Unassigned students section. Select Show All to view the entire list.

• In the Group students menu, select Self-enrollment .
• Your students are evenly divided among the groups listed next to Number of groups . Select the plus sign wherever you want to add another group. The Number of groups updates automatically. You can add and delete groups even after students have started to join. If you delete a group that students have already joined, they’re moved to the unassigned list. You’ll need to notify them to join one of the remaining groups or you can add them to a group. Reminder : You can’t delete groups with submitted work.
• Optionally, add an enrollment start and end date. Students can see the groups page and the assignment only after the enrollment period opens. Select the arrow next to Advanced options to collapse the enrollment section. Reminder : When the enrollment period ends, students can no longer join groups and need to ask you to add them.

Pay attention to the Maximum members per group and the Number of groups. For example, if you lower the maximum number, some students won’t be allowed to enroll in a group at the end of the enrollment period. You’ll need to create new groups and enroll the students so that they can access the group assignment.

To allow unlimited members per group, leave blank. Students see the maximum number allowed when they make their group selections. If you allow an unlimited number per group, students see the total number of students in their class. For example, if you've set up four field trips, you can allow all students to join all groups.

You can override the maximum membership for a group. For example, you can add a newly enrolled student to a group that hasn't submitted work.

• Select the Hide enrolled members check box if you don't want students to see who's already joined.
• Optionally, add group descriptions. If each group works on a different topic or meets at a certain time or destination, add that information to help students choose a group. You have no limit on the number of characters.
• Open the menu next to a group to access the management options.

Self-enroll groups in the gradebook

After you create self-enroll groups, each group appears with a question mark icon on the Submissions page in the gradebook. After students join groups, select the members link to show or hide the list.

Learn about the student view of self-enrolling in groups —use your browser's back function to return to this topic

You can reuse groups from an existing group assessment, discussion, or course group set. Titles for your existing course group sets start with "Group Set."

If you reuse a group set and make changes to the group set, those changes affect the group assignment. Learn more about how group set changes affect the linked content items .

• In the Group students menu, select a title from the Reuse group section.
• The same students are added to your new assignment.  If you move members, the membership changes wherever these groups appear, including the course group set .
• Edit the individual group names as needed.

You may need to add new students added to your course to your new groups.

Manage individual groups

After you create a group assignment, you can add or delete individual groups and manage student membership. You can also edit group names, add or edit group descriptions, and send messages to your groups to kick off collaboration!

You can also remove groups from the assignment if the groups haven't started their submissions. Select the Delete icon in the Assignment Settings panel.

Add and delete groups

Select the plus sign wherever you want to add a group.

If you no longer need a group, open the group's menu and select Delete group . The students in that group are unassigned automatically and appear at the top of the page. You can manually assign these students to new groups. Or, you can randomly assign all students —not only the students you unassigned—to the number of groups you choose. You can't delete a group with submitted work.

Ramifications

• If you add or delete a group in a group set that you used to create a group assignment, the assignment's groups are updated. Edits to group titles and descriptions also affect the assignment.
• If you add or delete a group in a group assignment that's based on a course group set, the course group set is updated. Edits to group titles and descriptions also affect the course group set.
• If you delete an entire group set used to create a group assignment, the assignment’s groups are removed.
• If you delete a group assessment based on a course group set, the group set is unaffected.

Manage student membership

You can move students between groups and add new students added to your course. New members can access the work the group has saved up to that point. New group members can also submit work on behalf of the group.

When you move students who have grades to different groups, their grades move with them, but their work doesn’t. These new group members keep their existing grades. Their grades won’t apply to the rest of the group. However, if you haven't graded the group work, the new members' grades will update.

If a group has received a grade and you move students to this group, you need to manually assign grades to them.

Open the menu next to a student's name to access these options:

• Start a new group with the student as a member.
• Select Unassign to remove the student from the group. Unassigned students appear at the top of the page. Reminder : Students who aren't assigned to a group won't have access to the group assignment because it won't appear on their Course Content pages.
• Assign the student to a different group that already exists. Select the group's name in the menu. For self-enrollment groups, you can move selected students to other groups, even if the group limit is exceeded.

You can also move multiple students to a different group in one action, create a new group for them, or unassign them all from the group.

To remove all students from all groups, select Unassign All at the top of the page. Unassign All disappears after groups submit attempts.

If you change the number of self-enrollment groups, new groups are created, and all members are unassigned. Students who enrolled previously aren’t notified they need to enroll again.

• Membership changes in a group set affect everywhere the groups are used, such as in group assignments.
• Membership changes in a group assignment based on a course group set affect the course group set.

Group assignments appear on the Course Content page

You can view how many groups you assigned and open the link to view the members. If you've enabled group conversations, an activity icon appears for new activity.

Ready to grade?

You can assign one grade for each group or grade students on their individual contributions.

More on grading a group assignment

Student workflow

On the Course Content page, students can see their group names listed with the group assignment. When they access the group assignment, they can see their group members. Each group member can edit and update the draft saved in the group assignment.

Students who aren't assigned to a group won't have access to the group assignment because it won't appear on their Course Content pages.

If Join a group to participate appears under a group assignment title, students select the link to choose a group. Students may see an enrollment period if you added one. Students need to join a group before the deadline. If they haven't joined a group, students are notified when the enrollment deadline approaches.

Reminder : When the enrollment period ends, students can no longer join groups and aren’t enrolled automatically . Students need to ask you to add them so they can view the group assignment.

Move to another group

Students may move to a different group if their present group or the new group hasn’t submitted work. If you’ve added an enrollment period, students may only move while the enrollment period is open.

Group assignment submission

Some students may have anxiety about opening a group assignment. They may think that they have to submit the group assignment if they open it. You might tell students that when they select View assessment , they can just view the assignment or add some work.

Group members can add work, save a draft, and let other members work on the assignment also. After a group member views the assignment or adds some work, the member selects Save and Close in the panel. Their work on behalf of the group is saved and not submitted. Another group member can resume working on the assignment later. Everyone in the group can keep track of the latest version of the work.

When the work is finished, only one student in the group needs to submit for the group.

More on the student workflow

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MoSCoW Prioritization

What is moscow prioritization.

MoSCoW prioritization, also known as the MoSCoW method or MoSCoW analysis, is a popular prioritization technique for managing requirements. 

  The acronym MoSCoW represents four categories of initiatives: must-have, should-have, could-have, and won’t-have, or will not have right now. Some companies also use the “W” in MoSCoW to mean “wish.”

What is the History of the MoSCoW Method?

Software development expert Dai Clegg created the MoSCoW method while working at Oracle. He designed the framework to help his team prioritize tasks during development work on product releases.

You can find a detailed account of using MoSCoW prioritization in the Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM) handbook . But because MoSCoW can prioritize tasks within any time-boxed project, teams have adapted the method for a broad range of uses.

How Does MoSCoW Prioritization Work?

Before running a MoSCoW analysis, a few things need to happen. First, key stakeholders and the product team need to get aligned on objectives and prioritization factors. Then, all participants must agree on which initiatives to prioritize.

At this point, your team should also discuss how they will settle any disagreements in prioritization. If you can establish how to resolve disputes before they come up, you can help prevent those disagreements from holding up progress.

Finally, you’ll also want to reach a consensus on what percentage of resources you’d like to allocate to each category.

With the groundwork complete, you may begin determining which category is most appropriate for each initiative. But, first, let’s further break down each category in the MoSCoW method.

Start prioritizing your roadmap

Moscow prioritization categories.

1. Must-have initiatives

As the name suggests, this category consists of initiatives that are “musts” for your team. They represent non-negotiable needs for the project, product, or release in question. For example, if you’re releasing a healthcare application, a must-have initiative may be security functionalities that help maintain compliance.

The “must-have” category requires the team to complete a mandatory task. If you’re unsure about whether something belongs in this category, ask yourself the following.

If the product won’t work without an initiative, or the release becomes useless without it, the initiative is most likely a “must-have.”

2. Should-have initiatives

Should-have initiatives are just a step below must-haves. They are essential to the product, project, or release, but they are not vital. If left out, the product or project still functions. However, the initiatives may add significant value.

“Should-have” initiatives are different from “must-have” initiatives in that they can get scheduled for a future release without impacting the current one. For example, performance improvements, minor bug fixes, or new functionality may be “should-have” initiatives. Without them, the product still works.

3. Could-have initiatives

Another way of describing “could-have” initiatives is nice-to-haves. “Could-have” initiatives are not necessary to the core function of the product. However, compared with “should-have” initiatives, they have a much smaller impact on the outcome if left out.

So, initiatives placed in the “could-have” category are often the first to be deprioritized if a project in the “should-have” or “must-have” category ends up larger than expected.

4. Will not have (this time)

One benefit of the MoSCoW method is that it places several initiatives in the “will-not-have” category. The category can manage expectations about what the team will not include in a specific release (or another timeframe you’re prioritizing).

Placing initiatives in the “will-not-have” category is one way to help prevent scope creep . If initiatives are in this category, the team knows they are not a priority for this specific time frame. 

Some initiatives in the “will-not-have” group will be prioritized in the future, while others are not likely to happen. Some teams decide to differentiate between those by creating a subcategory within this group.

How Can Development Teams Use MoSCoW?

  Although Dai Clegg developed the approach to help prioritize tasks around his team’s limited time, the MoSCoW method also works when a development team faces limitations other than time. For example: 

Prioritize based on budgetary constraints.

What if a development team’s limiting factor is not a deadline but a tight budget imposed by the company? Working with the product managers, the team can use MoSCoW first to decide on the initiatives that represent must-haves and the should-haves. Then, using the development department’s budget as the guide, the team can figure out which items they can complete. 

Prioritize based on the team’s skillsets.

A cross-functional product team might also find itself constrained by the experience and expertise of its developers. If the product roadmap calls for functionality the team does not have the skills to build, this limiting factor will play into scoring those items in their MoSCoW analysis.

Prioritize based on competing needs at the company.

Cross-functional teams can also find themselves constrained by other company priorities. The team wants to make progress on a new product release, but the executive staff has created tight deadlines for further releases in the same timeframe. In this case, the team can use MoSCoW to determine which aspects of their desired release represent must-haves and temporarily backlog everything else.

What Are the Drawbacks of MoSCoW Prioritization?

  Although many product and development teams have prioritized MoSCoW, the approach has potential pitfalls. Here are a few examples.

1. An inconsistent scoring process can lead to tasks placed in the wrong categories.

  One common criticism against MoSCoW is that it does not include an objective methodology for ranking initiatives against each other. Your team will need to bring this methodology to your analysis. The MoSCoW approach works only to ensure that your team applies a consistent scoring system for all initiatives.

Pro tip: One proven method is weighted scoring, where your team measures each initiative on your backlog against a standard set of cost and benefit criteria. You can use the weighted scoring approach in ProductPlan’s roadmap app .

2. Not including all relevant stakeholders can lead to items placed in the wrong categories.

To know which of your team’s initiatives represent must-haves for your product and which are merely should-haves, you will need as much context as possible.

For example, you might need someone from your sales team to let you know how important (or unimportant) prospective buyers view a proposed new feature.

One pitfall of the MoSCoW method is that you could make poor decisions about where to slot each initiative unless your team receives input from all relevant stakeholders. 

3. Team bias for (or against) initiatives can undermine MoSCoW’s effectiveness.

Because MoSCoW does not include an objective scoring method, your team members can fall victim to their own opinions about certain initiatives. 

One risk of using MoSCoW prioritization is that a team can mistakenly think MoSCoW itself represents an objective way of measuring the items on their list. They discuss an initiative, agree that it is a “should have,” and move on to the next.

But your team will also need an objective and consistent framework for ranking all initiatives. That is the only way to minimize your team’s biases in favor of items or against them.

When Do You Use the MoSCoW Method for Prioritization?

MoSCoW prioritization is effective for teams that want to include representatives from the whole organization in their process. You can capture a broader perspective by involving participants from various functional departments.

Another reason you may want to use MoSCoW prioritization is it allows your team to determine how much effort goes into each category. Therefore, you can ensure you’re delivering a good variety of initiatives in each release.

What Are Best Practices for Using MoSCoW Prioritization?

If you’re considering giving MoSCoW prioritization a try, here are a few steps to keep in mind. Incorporating these into your process will help your team gain more value from the MoSCoW method.

1. Choose an objective ranking or scoring system.

Remember, MoSCoW helps your team group items into the appropriate buckets—from must-have items down to your longer-term wish list. But MoSCoW itself doesn’t help you determine which item belongs in which category.

You will need a separate ranking methodology. You can choose from many, such as:

• Weighted scoring
• Value vs. complexity
• Buy-a-feature
• Opportunity scoring

For help finding the best scoring methodology for your team, check out ProductPlan’s article: 7 strategies to choose the best features for your product .

2. Seek input from all key stakeholders.

To make sure you’re placing each initiative into the right bucket—must-have, should-have, could-have, or won’t-have—your team needs context. 

At the beginning of your MoSCoW method, your team should consider which stakeholders can provide valuable context and insights. Sales? Customer success? The executive staff? Product managers in another area of your business? Include them in your initiative scoring process if you think they can help you see opportunities or threats your team might miss. 

3. Share your MoSCoW process across your organization.

MoSCoW gives your team a tangible way to show your organization prioritizing initiatives for your products or projects. 

The method can help you build company-wide consensus for your work, or at least help you show stakeholders why you made the decisions you did.

Communicating your team’s prioritization strategy also helps you set expectations across the business. When they see your methodology for choosing one initiative over another, stakeholders in other departments will understand that your team has thought through and weighed all decisions you’ve made. 

If any stakeholders have an issue with one of your decisions, they will understand that they can’t simply complain—they’ll need to present you with evidence to alter your course of action.  

Related Terms

2×2 prioritization matrix / Eisenhower matrix / DACI decision-making framework / ICE scoring model / RICE scoring model

Prioritizing your roadmap using our guide

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Schedule a few minutes with us to share more about your product roadmapping goals and we'll tailor a demo to show you how easy it is to build strategic roadmaps, align behind customer needs, prioritize, and measure success.

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Set up automatic license assignments in Control Hub

Save time when assigning licenses to users by setting up automatic licensing.

Why should I use automatic licensing?

• Automatically grant new users the right licenses for their services.
• Avoid a slow, manual method of assigning licenses.
• Assign licenses to existing users in Control Hub.

Should I use group license assignment or organization license assignment?

Yes, you can configure license assignments for the whole organization.

Yes, you can configure license assignments for specific groups within the organization.

This feature requires that you are using groups in Webex. See Group management for details about group creation in Control Hub and Cisco Directory Connector for information about how to synchronize your groups from Active Directory with Webex.

Organization-based assignments always apply to new users as you add them to your organization. This is shown by the (always checked) Future users check box on the organization licenses assignment page.

You can also choose to have the assignment apply to Existing users . This option changes the licenses assigned to all users who are already in your organization when you save the change.

If you choose Existing users , you can also Preserve licenses for existing users . For example, if some users already have Advanced Messaging , then you change the assignment to exclude that license, those users will keep their advanced messaging features. Without the box checked, the existing users would lose those features.

Group-based assignments always apply to new users who join the group. This is shown by the (always checked) Future users check box on the group licenses assignment page.

You can also choose to have the assignment apply to Existing users . This option changes the licenses assigned to all users who are already in that group. It happens when you save the change.

If you choose Existing users , you can also decide to Preserve licenses for existing users . For example, if some users in the group already have Advanced Messaging , then you change the assignment to exclude that license, those users will keep their advanced messaging features. Without the box checked, the existing users in that group would lose those features.

Users that change groups always get the licenses from the new group. You can choose whether they also keep the licensing they had before the move, or if they lose their old assignments when they move. You control this with the Users > Licenses > Preserve licenses toggle.

How do license assignments work?

Yes, you can add licenses for existing users by checking the Existing users option when you add or modify the license assignment. If you want to remove licenses with this feature, you must also uncheck Preserve licenses for existing users (checked by default).

Yes, you can assign or remove services for existing users if you check the Existing users box.

You should disable the preserve licenses option if you want to remove licenses from users who already had them. This applies to both organization and group assignments.

When you remove a service from a license assignment, or delete the license assignment, you get two options with license preservation. You can either enable license preservation or disable it. When you keep license preservation on, the users who were originally licensed by the license assignment keep all the services they were originally assigned. When it’s off, the licenses are removed.

New users who are licensed by a modified license assignment do not get the service that you removed. If you removed the whole license assignment, then new users do not automatically receive any licenses.

No. A group's license assignment only assigns licenses to new users who are direct members of the group. Users in nested groups don't get the licenses from the parent group's license assignment. In Control Hub, the groups hierarchy is flat.

When you move a user from one group into another, you get two options of preserving licenses or not preserving them. On the License assignment page, there is a separate setting to choose license preservation for group transitions. That setting controls the license preservation options for asynchronous operations such as group transitions.

If a user is in multiple groups, the user gains licenses from the assignments applied to all their groups (unless there would be a duplicate assignment).

An exception to this is if users are in multiple license assignments that assign host licenses and attendee roles for the same Meetings site, then those users are only assigned host licenses for those Meetings sites. However, if there aren’t enough host licenses, then users get attendee roles.*

* Previously, the assignment would assign users with attendee roles even if licenses were available. This has been updated so that users now get assigned host licenses.

New users belonging to group license assignments that assign both attendee roles and host licenses make sure that those users at least get attendee roles even if host licenses aren’t available. If host licenses are available, then those users get host licenses.

No, users cannot be assigned the same service more than once.

However, if you have multiple meetings sites, you can potentially grant users multiple meetings licenses (one for each site).

Yes, you can use license assignments to assign Webex Calling licenses to users. See Set up automatic license assignment templates for Webex Calling users for more information.

What about Meetings licenses in Control Hub?

Yes. Users linked from Site Administration are subject to automatic licensing.

So, if you have organization based assignment, newly linked users automatically receive the licenses specified in the assignment as they come into your Control Hub organization.

Licenses are distinct in different meetings sites. So, if you have two sites with different group assignments for each, then when you move users from one group into another, the result is those users get licenses for both meetings sites.

Yes. If your assignment has a Meetings license on it, then you get an option to assign Attendee role using the license assignment.

You must have the Attendee account feature enabled for your Webex site to assign users as attendees. If you don't see the Attendee account column in the CSV file, contact the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) to enable this feature for your Webex site.

You can uncheck the Basic Meetings option so that users aren't automatically assigned with Basic Meetings licenses.

To confirm that your users aren't assigned any Basic licenses (Messaging, Meeting, or Calling), remove those from the org-based templates.

How does Webex allocate licenses from multiple subscriptions?

You can apply licenses from multiple subscriptions to the same assignment. This could be the case if you originally bought a subscription for 100 messaging licenses, then bought another subscription for 50 when more of your users wanted Webex.

In such cases, Webex assigns the licenses from the oldest subscription until they are all used, and then moves on to the next oldest subscription. You can see subscription creation dates in Control Hub.

Which Contact Center license takes priority if a user is a member of different groups?

If a user is a member to two groups with different Contact Center licenses, that user will be assigned the Premium agent license.

If I add a new user through API or CSV and assign them with a specific license, will the organization-based auto license assignment be applied to that user?

No. If you assign a license to a new user at the same time of creation, then the organization-based auto license assignment won’t apply to that user.

• Configure AD groups-based automatic licensing for new users

Change to Preserve licenses toggle persists on Cancel If you disable the Preserve licenses toggle in Control Hub, there's a warning that requires an extra click to disable. If you cancel the warning dialog, the toggle doesn't return to its original (enabled) state.

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How defeat in Mali raises doubts about Russia's Wagner in Africa

STORY: At the end of July, the bodies of dozens of mercenaries from Russia's Wagner group lay in the sand of Mali's desert.

:: Near Tinzaouaten, Mali

They were killed in a battle with Tuareg rebels during a sandstorm near the town of Tinzaouaten on the Algerian border.

It was a heavy defeat, which analysis has now revealed involved seasoned Russian war veterans.

:: Near Aguelhok, Mali

:: July 2024

That shines a spotlight on the dangers for Russian mercenaries who may have thought that an Africa posting was an easy assignment.

And it also casts doubt, analysts say, on Moscow's ability to do any better against separatists and powerful offshoots of Al Qaeda and Islamic State than the Western powers recently expelled by juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

:: Bamako, Mali

Jedrzej Czerep, an analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, described the defeat as the biggest Wagner has ever suffered in Africa.

"They were still under the impression that it was essentially an easy fight. They captured Kidal, the northern town in Mali, last year with no fight actually, so they underestimated the quality of the Tuareg fighters that they were facing."

Now, through a combination of publicly available information, interviews with relatives and facial recognition software, Reuters has identified 23 fighters missing in action and two now held in Tuareg captivity.

Among them are veterans who had toured in Ukraine, Libya and Syria.

Several had survived the siege of Bakhmut in Ukraine, which Wagner's late founder Yevgeny Prigozhin called a "meat grinder."

:: PMC Wagner via Telegram

After Prigozhin died in August last year, Wagner employees were invited to join a new group.

:: Bangui, Central African Republic

In the Africa Corps, under the defense ministry, recruits could, quote, "fight for justice and the interests of Russia."

Wagner's enterprises on the continent have previously involved protecting coup leaders, fighting jihadists and gold mining.

Ladd Serwat, an Africa specialist at the U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, said civilian fatalities since Wagner formally became Africa Corps have been "incredibly high."

"Those have escalated in Mali beyond those that we saw under the leadership of Prigozhin's."

:: Niamey, Niger

ACLED data shows violent events linked to Russian mercenaries rose 81% and reported civilian fatalities rose 65% over the past year, compared to the year before Prigozhin's death.

Czerep says Africa Corps has also conducted a "massive" recruitment drive.

"And that created this feeling that this was the best opportunity that mercenaries have to be on the safe side, to earn some money, and also to experience this tropical adventure. It may be ironic, but it seems like it's a holiday type of experience."

Tuareg rebels, who are fighting for an independent homeland, say they killed 84 Russians and 47 members of Mali's armed forces in the Battle of Tinzaouaten.

Grisly footage of dead fighters has since circulated online.

Some relatives say the bodies of their husbands and sons have been abandoned in the desert.

Lyubov Bazhenova said she was angry with Wagner for sharing no information about the fate of her son Vladimir Akimov, or the whereabouts of his body.

Margarita Goncharova said her son, Vadim Evsiukov had served in Ukraine, but had struggled with survivor's guilt and secretly travelled to Africa in April to join his former commander.

One of the most experienced men was Alexander Lazarev, who served in wars against Chechen separatists in the 1990s and 2000s according to his wife's posts in a Wagner channel on the social media app Telegram.

:: Tabankort, Mali

Wagner has acknowledged heavy losses in the Mali ambush but gave no figure. The Malian army also did not give a death toll.

The Russian Ministry of Defense, Foreign Ministry and Wagner, did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

A spokesman for the Tuareg rebels said their aim is not to harm anyone and that they don't have a problem with Russia, but that it is Russia that has "invited itself into problems that don't concern it."

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Approval Groups vs Assignment Groups

Best Practice help required here.

We have a number of tech assignment groups. Within those groups is a subset of people that can approve changes and requests.

Firstly, does anyone else have this? I'm a process owner/designer and our ServiceNow developer is saying this is a stupid way of doing things.

Secondly, does anyone have an idea of how to do this so that we can't assign incidents to the Approval group and assign Approvals to the Incident/Problem groups?

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The Ultimate Guide to Product Prioritization + 8 Frameworks

Lisa Dziuba

Updated: September 11, 2024 - 26 min read

One of the most challenging aspects of Product Management is prioritization. If you’ve transitioned to Product from another discipline, you might already think you know how to do it. You choose which task to work on first, which deadline needs to be met above all others, and which order to answer your emails in.

Priorities, right? Wrong!

In product management, prioritization is on a whole other level! The engineers are telling you that Feature A will be really cool and will take you to the next level. But a key stakeholder is gently suggesting that Feature B should be included in V1. Finally, your data analyst is convinced that Feature B is completely unnecessary and that users are crying out for Feature C.

Who decides how to prioritize the features? You do.

Prioritization is an essential part of the product management process and product development. It can feel daunting, but for a successful launch , it has to be done.

Luckily, a whole community of Product experts has come before you. They’ve built great things, including some excellent prioritization frameworks!

Quick summary

Here’s what we’ll cover in this article: 

The benefits and challenges of prioritization

The best prioritization frameworks and when to use them 

How real Product Leaders implement prioritization at Microsoft, Amazon, and HSBC

Common prioritization mistakes

Frequently Asked Questions

Benefits and challenges of prioritization

Before we dive into the different prioritization models, let’s talk about why prioritization is so important and what holds PMs back.

Benefits of effective feature prioritization

Enhanced focus on key objectives: Prioritization allows you to concentrate on tasks that align closely with your product's core goals. For example, when Spotify prioritized personalized playlists, it significantly boosted user engagement, aligning perfectly with its goal of providing a unique user experience.

Resource optimization: You can allocate your team’s time and your company’s resources more efficiently. Focusing on fewer, more impactful projects can lead to greater innovation and success.

Improved decision-making: When you prioritize, you're essentially making strategic decisions about where to focus efforts. This clarity in decision-making can lead to more successful outcomes, avoiding the pitfalls of cognitive biases like recency bias and the sunk cost fallacy .

Strategic focus: Prioritization aligns tasks with the company's broader strategic goals, ensuring that day-to-day activities contribute to long-term objectives.

Consider the example of Apple Inc. under the leadership of Steve Jobs. One of Jobs' first actions when he returned to Apple in 1997 was to slash the number of projects and products the company was working on.

Apple refocused its efforts on just a handful of key projects. This ruthless prioritization allowed Apple to focus on quality rather than quantity, leading to the development of groundbreaking products like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. 

Stress reduction : From customer interactions to executive presentations, the responsibilities of a PM are vast and varied, often leading to a risk of burnout if not managed adeptly. For more on this, check out this talk by Glenn Wilson, Google Group PM, on Play the Long Game When Everything Is on Fire .

Challenges of prioritization

Managing stakeholder expectations: Different stakeholders may have varying priorities. For instance, your engineering team might prioritize feature development , while marketing may push for more customer-centric enhancements. Striking a balance can be challenging.

Adapting to changing market conditions: The market is dynamic, and priorities can shift unexpectedly. When the pandemic hit, Zoom had to quickly reprioritize to cater to a massive surge in users, emphasizing scalability and security over other planned enhancements.

Dealing with limited information: Even in the PM & PMM world, having a strong data-driven team is more often a dream rather than a current reality. Even when there is data, you can’t know everything. Amazon’s decision to enter the cloud computing market with AWS was initially seen as a risky move, but they prioritized the gamble and it paid off spectacularly.

Limited resources : Smaller businesses and startups don’t have the luxury of calmly building lots of small features, hoping that some of them will improve the product. The less funding a company has, the fewer mistakes (iterations) it can afford to make when building an MVP or figuring out Product-Market Fit.

Bias: If you read The Mom Test book, you probably know that people will lie about their experience with your product to make you feel comfortable. This means that product prioritization can be influenced by biased opinions, having “nice-to-have” features at the top of the list.

Lack of alignment: Different teams can have varying opinions as to what is “important”. When these differences aren’t addressed, product prioritization can become a fight between what brings Product-Led Growth, more leads, higher Net Promoter Score, better User Experience, higher retention, or lower churn. Lack of alignment is not the last issue startups face when prioritizing features.

Prioritization Frameworks

There are a lot of prioritization models for PMs to employ. While it’s great to have so many tools at your disposal, it can also be a bit overwhelming. You might even ask yourself which prioritization framework you should…prioritize. 

In reality, each model is like a different tool in your toolbox. Just like a hammer is better than a wrench at hammering nails, each model is right depending on the type of prioritization task at hand. The first step is to familiarize yourself with the most trusty frameworks out there. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

The MoSCoW method

Known as the MoSCoW Prioritization Technique or MoSCoW Analysis , MoSCoW is a method used to easily categorize what’s important and what’s not. The name is an acronym of four prioritization categories: Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won’t have .

It’s a particularly useful tool for communicating to stakeholders what you’re working on and why.

According to MoSCoW, all the features go into one of four categories:

Must Have These are the features that will make or break the product. Without them, the user will not be able to get value from the product or won’t be able to use it. These are the “painkillers” that form the why behind your product, and often are closely tied to how the product will generate revenue.

Should Have These are important features but are not needed to make the product functional. Think of them as your “second priorities”. They could be enhanced options that address typical use cases. 

Could Have Often seen as nice to have items, not critical but would be welcomed. These are “vitamins”, not painkillers. They might be integrations and extensions that enhance users’ workflow.

Won’t Have Similar to the “money pit” in the impact–effort matrix framework, these are features that are not worth the time or effort they would require to develop.

Pros of using this framework: MoSCoW is ideal when looking for a simplified approach that can involve the less technical members of the company and one that can easily categorize the most important features.

Cons of using this framework: It is difficult to set the right number of must-have features and, as a result, your Product Backlog may end up with too many features that tax the development team.

RICE scoring

Developed by the Intercom team, the RICE scoring system compares Reach, Impact, Confidence , and Effort.

Reach centers the focus on the customers by thinking about how many people will be impacted by a feature or release. You can measure this using the number of people who will benefit from a feature in a certain period of time. For example, “How many customers will use this feature per month?”

Now that you’ve thought about how many people you’ll reach, it’s time to think about how they’ll be affected. Think about the goal you’re trying to reach. It could be to delight customers (measured in positive reviews and referrals) or reduce churn.

Intercom recommends a multiple-choice scale:

3 = massive impact

2 = high impact

1 = medium impact

0.5 = low impact

0.25 = minimal impact

A confidence percentage expresses how secure team members feel about their assessments of reach and impact. The effect this has is that it de-prioritizes features that are too risky.

Generally, anything above 80% is considered a high confidence score, and anything below 50% is unqualified.

Considering effort helps balance cost and benefit. In an ideal world, everything would be high-impact/low-effort, although this is rarely the case. You’ll need information from everyone involved (designers, engineers, etc.) to calculate effort. 

Think about the amount of work one team member can do in a month, which will naturally be different across teams. Estimate how much work it’ll take each team member working on the project. The more time allotted to a project, the higher the reach, impact, and confidence will need to be to make it worth the effort.

Calculating a RICE score

Now you should have four numbers representing each of the 4 categories. To calculate your score, multiply Reach, Impact, and Confidence. Then divide by Effort.

Pros of using this framework:  

Its spreadsheet format and database approach are awesome for data-focused teams. This method also filters out guesswork and the “loudest voice” factor because of the confidence metric. For teams that have a high volume of hypotheses to test, having a spreadsheet format is quick and scalable.

Cons of using this framework: 

The RICE format might be hard to digest if your startup team consists mainly of visual thinkers. When you move fast, it’s essential to use a format that everyone will find comfortable. When there are 30+ possible features for complex products, this becomes a long spreadsheet to digest.

Impact–Effort Matrix 

The Impact-Effort Matrix is similar to the RICE method but better suited to visual thinkers. This 2-D matrix plots the “value” (impact) of a feature for the user vs the complexity of development, otherwise known as the “effort”. 

When using the impact–effort matrix, the Product Owner first adds all features or product hypotheses. Then the team that executes on these product hypotheses votes on where to place the features on the impact and effort dimensions. Each feature ends up in one of 4 quadrants:

Quick wins Low effort and high impact are features or ideas that will bring growth. 

Big bets High effort but high impact. These have the potential to make a big difference but must be well-planned. If your hypothesis fails here, you waste a lot of development time. 

Fill-ins Low value but also low effort. Fill-ins don’t take much time but they still should only be worked on if other more important tasks are complete. These are good tasks to focus on while waiting on blockers to higher priority features to be worked out. 

Money pit Low value and high effort features are detrimental to morale and the bottom line. They should be avoided at all costs.

Pros of using this framework:  It allows quick prioritization and works well when the number of features is small. It can be shared across the whole startup team, as it’s easy to understand at first glance.

Cons of using this framework:  If two product hypotheses are “quick wins”, which should go first? For this reason, it’s not the best framework when there are a lot of features. Also, beware of “fill-ins”, as they can take much more time and resources than expected and create loss of focus.

Professor Noriaki Kano, a Japanese educator and influential figure in quality management, developed the Kano model in the 1980s. Since then, it has been widely used by organizations seeking to prioritize customer satisfaction.

Delighters: The features that customers will perceive as going above and beyond their expectations. These are the things that will differentiate you from your competition.

Performance features: Customers respond well to high investments in performance features.

Basic features: The minimum expected by customers to solve their problems. Without these, the product is of little use to them.

The main idea behind the Kano model is that if you focus on the features that come under these three brackets, the higher your level of customer satisfaction will be.

To find out how customers value certain features, use questionnaires asking how their experience of your product would change with or without them.

As time goes along, you may find that features that used to be delighters move down closer towards ‘Basic Features’ as technology catches up and customers have come to expect them, so it’s important to reassess periodically.

Pros of using this framework: Because the model differentiates between basic needs and features that can delight customers, it prioritizes more customer-focused products and services.

Cons of using this framework: The categorization of features into Kano’s categories can be subjective, leading to inconsistencies. It doesn't directly address other crucial aspects like cost, time-to-market, or feasibility, which can also significantly impact product success.

Feasibility, Desirability, and Viability scorecard

Developed by IDEO in the early 2000s, this scorecard takes three core criteria — feasibility, desirability, and viability. It scores each criterion from 1 - 10 for every feature and takes a total to decide on the priority. 

Feasibility Can we build this feature with the skills and resources available? Is it possible to make this particular product hypothesis fast and without hiring extra people? Do you have an available tech stack/tools/cloud storage to do it?

Desirability Does this solve the pain for the customers? Do they want this feature enough to consider paying for it?

Viability How much will users pay for this feature? What’s the (ROI)? Is there any unit economy behind this feature?

Using this framework, your team creates a spreadsheet with product features and puts a score for each parameter. Another way to use this framework is to evaluate MVP ideas for feasibility, desirability, and viability via a team discussion. 

Ideas that have the most support from the team on those parameters can go right into the design sprint . Use the relevant people to help with the evaluation. For example, developers to look at feasibility or Product Marketing Managers to discuss desirability. This scorecard is pretty straightforward with clear pros and cons:

Pros of using this framework: The flexibility of the FDV scorecard means it can be used for evaluating marketing initiatives, hypotheses for customer success teams, or MVP concepts. It works well for teams that don’t find rigid frameworks helpful or for a workshop, or discussion on the executive level. 

Cons of using this framework: This approach relies a lot on knowledge of what the customer wants and how complex new features are. That is not always data that is readily available. 

Weighted Scoring Prioritization

This method follows a similar pattern to other frameworks on this list but with the significant addition of weighting how much of each category counts towards the final total. 

The process starts by selecting the criteria/categories you’ll be using to rate the features. For example, you might select “user experience”, “sales value”, “strategic impact”, “user adoption” or any of the Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue (AARRR) metrics.

Next, you need to decide what importance you give to each category, adding a percentage value to each criterion (up to 100%). For example, during the early stages, you might focus on UX features that make an MVP usable. Each feature will have a score in those categories, from 1 (min impact) – 100 (max impact). Then you can now calculate the final score for each feature.

Pros of using this framework: The framework is customizable, which allows you to utilize the framework throughout an organization’s lifetime.

Cons of using this framework: Sometimes the weighting percentages can be hard to decide on. It requires PMMs & PMs to understand how each feature will influence user adoption across the whole product ecosystem. 

Cost of Delay

The Cost of Delay framework is unique in that it focuses exclusively on monetary value. The framework is designed to calculate the cost of not producing the feature immediately. It’s relatively straightforward to understand, although the calculation itself does require careful consideration. 

The calculation is as follows:

Estimated revenue per unit of time , for example, how much could be billed over a month-long period if the feature existed.

Estimated time it will take to complete the development of the feature.

Divide the estimated revenue by the estimated time to give you the cost of delay.

Pros of using this framework: This is a highly effective way of prioritizing feature backlogs. It is also useful in helping team members align around the value of features in terms of ROI.

Cons of using this framework: For new companies or brand-new features, the revenue estimate is very much based on a gut feeling as there is no hard data to base the estimates on.

Product Tree

Luke Hohmann introduced the concept of ‘Prune the Product Tree’, in his book Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play . During a Product Tree session, stakeholders use stickers, markers, or digital equivalents to place features, ideas, and enhancements on different parts of the tree according to where they think they belong in terms of product development priorities. 

Roots : Represent the core technologies, systems, and cap

abilities that support and enable the product's basic functions. These are fundamental aspects without which the product cannot function.

Trunk : Symbolizes the product's main functionalities or the current set of features. It is the stable and established part of the product that supports further growth.

Branches : Illustrate different areas of the product that can grow and expand, such as new feature sets, product lines, or major enhancements.

Leaves : Stand for specific features, ideas, or small enhancements that can be added to the product. These are often more visible to the end-users and can directly contribute to user satisfaction and product value.

Which model should I use?

Knowing which prioritization framework to use is tough! The Kano model is useful for making customer-centric decisions and focus on delight, but it can take time to carry out all the questionnaires needed for your insights to be accurate and fair.

Many people like the RICE scoring system as it takes confidence into account in a qualitative way, but there are still a lot of uncertainties.

MoSCoW focuses on what matters to both customers and stakeholders, which is particularly useful for Product Managers who struggle with managing stakeholder expectations. However, there’s nothing stopping you from putting too many items in ‘Must have’ and overextending your resources.

Of course, these aren’t the only prioritization techniques out there, and many talented Product Managers have their own ways of doing things. All you can do is test, test, and test again!

How to prioritize individual tasks: Tips from busy product leaders

Microsoft: applying the eisenhower matrix to a busy inbox.

Microsoft Product Manager Anusha Bahtnagar, uses a prioritization technique called The Eisenhower Matrix to prioritize what comes into her inbox. As a Product Manager working with cross-continental teams, it’s common to wake up to a full inbox.

The Eisenhower Matrix effectively sorts your tasks/emails into four categories, and presents a solution.

Important and Urgent: Top priority tasks that require your urgent attention (eg, crisis management tasks.)

Urgent and Not Important: Time-sensitive tasks that could be handled by someone else. Delegate these tasks.

Important and Not Urgent: Tasks that you definitely need to do, but they can wait. Schedule these for the future.

Not Important and Not Urgent: Declutter and eliminate tasks.

Amazon and Google: Making customer-focused prioritization decisions

A common theme across many companies is that the customer comes first. The same goes for prioritization.

Asal Elleuch, a Senior Product Manager for Amazon Prime, calls prioritization “a never-ending and iterative process.”

Focusing on the customer gives you an incredibly useful yardstick for prioritization. After all, your company’s values should already be customer focused. And most of your stakeholders should also be aligned on The Why. 

The Product vision should also be heavily influenced by customer needs.

Being customer-focused in your prioritization will help keep your decisions aligned with everything else. Like one big customer-centric puzzle!

Google product teams achieve this by using North Star Metrics . Your North Star Metric can be any metric or action that provides the most value to the customer. For instance, Spotify’s North Star Metric might be clicking ‘play’ on a song. Google Search’s North Star Metric might be clicking on a search result.

You can then base your prioritization decisions around that metric. Whichever updates/features/bug fixes will have a greater impact on that metric has priority.

HSBC: The art of making impossible product decisions

To help make decisions, with so many outside influences and an interlocking web of things to consider, Product Leader Mariano Capezzani came up with his own prioritization system.

Broken down into 4 steps, it gives you a solid footing for making quality prioritization decisions.

Know the context . Understand things like how this task/feature fits with the KPIs of the company, the market trends, and related upcoming regulations.

Understand the need. Learn to differentiate between what customers are asking for and what they really need.

Consider the execution. Are you aware of the intricate network of dependencies and their interlock that are needed to deliver something?

Arrange the sequence. Apply a quick acid test to ensure it fits your criteria (contributes to company goals, benefits a market, etc.)

Common Product Prioritization Mistakes

Mistake 1: no agreed-upon scoring guide.

What does an impact score of “5” mean? A 1% growth or 10%? In conversion rate or MRR? Do other teammates think the same?

Without an agreed-upon scoring guide, you can’t make an apples-to-apples comparison between initiatives. This makes prioritization pointless. To make matters worse, it increases the likelihood of conflicts between team members, as you are essentially disguising opinions as objective decisions. 

How to fix it

Develop a shared scoring guide for your prioritization criteria. Define what each level entails with a concrete description and examples. Here’s an example guide for determining the confidence level:

A scoring guide can be created for any prioritization method, as long as it is:

Specific to your product and team context

Objective and clear

It’s important to point out that even with a guideline, there will still be disagreements — and that’s okay. Team members should be comfortable explaining their decisions and giving feedback to others. These discussions will help your team uncover blind spots and build alignment.

Mistake 2: Mixing discovery and delivery

Software development isn’t the only thing that takes time when building a product. So do problem analysis and solution design, commonly referred to together as product discovery .

However, discovery tasks usually get either:

Lumped in with development work → Creates messy dependency issues.

Left out of the prioritization process → Introduces a selection bias from the start.

Divide your product development into discovery and delivery, and prioritize the two backlogs separately. This is called Dual Track Development . 

Do note that having separate tracks doesn’t mean you should have separate teams. For any given project, the same team should carry out both discovery and delivery work to maximize quality and velocity. 

Mistake 3: Recency bias

Your team will always add items to the backlog faster than it will clear them. Over time, you will build up a long backlog with items from the previous century (year). Because it’s human nature to favor shiny new ideas (a.k.a. recency bias), old items tend to get forgotten for no good reason. 

As new evidence emerges, situations change, and your team’s estimation skills improve, you must constantly review old items to correctly prioritize the backlog.

Track the “freshness” of each item. When something has not been updated for longer than X period of time, groom it again using the latest information. If it’s no longer relevant, it’s time to remove it permanently.

Mistake 4: Not considering constraints 

Product development is inherently messy. Besides the core value-vs-cost consideration, there are also dependencies, deadlines, skill fit, strategic fit, and other constraints that influence your prioritization decisions.

No matter how ruthless you are with prioritization, you can’t simply dismiss these constraints. However, you also shouldn’t let them override your core prioritization criteria every single time. 

Teams that lack a good system to deal with these external factors often end up losing confidence in their prioritization processes altogether. 

Define a set of rules to work with these constraints, and make them part of your prioritization system.

Here are a few examples:

Time-sensitive projects → Set aside a fixed amount of resources each month to fast-track projects with non-negotiable deadlines (e.g., scheduled launch events, seasonable campaigns). Everything else will follow the regular process, even if it means not getting done at all.

Dependencies → A project blocked by other tasks will resume its position in the backlog as soon as the blocker is removed. However, it shouldn’t interrupt projects that have already started.

Strategic alignment → Assign more weight to projects that align with the company’s strategic priorities. This can be done with the Weighted Scoring method.

When you have consistent guidelines, people will trust the system, knowing that every decision is made objectively. 

Mistake 5: Over-complicating the process

Perfect prioritization does not exist. The information you use for prioritization is simply a set of estimations and estimations are always wrong . There is no need to treat your prioritization process like you’re planning a rocket launch. 

Prioritization is an exercise that helps you maximize your execution value. If you constantly direct more resources toward prioritization than execution, you are doing it wrong. 

Sometimes product teams spend months debating the relative value between small features when they could have shipped them all in the time lost.

Timebox your prioritization discussion. If your team gets stuck comparing initiatives, introduce a tie-breaker rule. For example, items that entered the backlog first go first. 

The point is, trivial differences will not matter in the long run, and if you never decide what goes first you’ll never get started.

Mistake 6: Not iterating the prioritization system 

No one gets prioritization right the first time. Even if you are satisfied with your current system, there will always be room for improvement if you look hard enough. Additionally, just because something works today doesn’t mean it’ll continue to work as the company scales. It’s dangerous to think you can create a prioritization system that requires minimal iterations. 

Treat your prioritization system (and other internal processes) like your product. Monitor how it’s working and iterate continuously. Because the “users” in this case are your team members, there should be an open channel for everyone to give feedback.

Generally speaking, frequent and small iterations are better than drastic revamps. However, be aware that:

It takes time for a new process to show its effects.

A new process can hurt productivity in the short term.

Not every problem has an easy solution.

To avoid interrupting team momentum with ad-hoc fixes, I recommend doing a quarterly or bi-yearly process review to go over all the feedback and discuss solutions as a team.

Bonus: Management interference

Having to rearrange your backlog due to management input, usually without a convincing reason, is one of the most frustrating yet common things that can happen to a product team. This is often due to a disconnect between company strategy and product strategy .

Such a discrepancy exists for a combination of reasons:

Management mistakes tactics for strategies. It dictates solutions instead of creating a direction for potential solutions.

Management doesn’t explain the “why” behind a strategy.

There is no clear process for teams to share learnings and evidence (both horizontally and vertically).

There is no agility in the company strategy, even when it no longer makes sense.

If you are a product leader (CPO, director, team lead, etc.), you have a critical responsibility here to bridge the gap between individual teams and senior management. Make sure to communicate information bi-directionally and fix misalignment proactively. A good way to start is by examining:

How are we sharing insights other teams should know?

Does every team have the same access to key information (ICP, positioning, data dashboard, etc.)?

What information does my team want to know but is out of their reach?

What is the best framework for prioritizing product features?

There is no ‘best framework’. There is only the best framework for a given prioritization task. Now that you’re familiar with the frameworks that product experts use day-to-day, look back at your OKRs and decide which model will turn your backlog into the right product at this moment in time. 

Who prioritizes the backlog?

The Product Manager is typically responsible for finalizing the prioritization, balancing stakeholder interests, user value, and feasibility.

Developers provide input on feasibility and effort estimates to help the PM. Stakeholders help PMs and developers understand business value and promote strategic alignment.

What is the best prioritization tool? 

There are tons of great prioritization tools out there, like our free template pack , which includes templates for 5 prioritization models. 

Whatever tool you use, the most important thing is to align around the model you’ll use and make sure everyone is using the same model in pursuit of the same OKRs, and make sure to clarify priorities within the timeline of your product roadmap so everyone is aligned.

What are the steps involved in using a prioritization framework?

Follow these general steps whenever using a prioritization model: 

Identify the moment: Identify the tasks in the backlog, strategy , and current OKRs.

Decide on a framework that will help you reach your team’s goals and apply it to the tasks in the backlog.

Try other frameworks and see if the same features came in first place.

How often should you review your prioritization framework?

Your team should review its priorities regularly. The cadence of that review depends on your team’s needs. How often is not important as long as it’s consistent. Always re-evaluate your prioritization framework if business objectives change. 

Can you use multiple prioritization frameworks?

Yes! In fact, some frameworks pair together as well as a nice chablis and fresh oysters:

Pair subjective and quantitative frameworks for contrast. For example: Cost of Delay + Kano model will balance revenue and customer delight.

Pair bird’s eye views with detailed analysis. Some frameworks are based on a general sense of the market and user trends while others on careful research. Cover your bases by using both. For example: Weighted Scoring + MoSCoW.

Prioritization in product management is less about ticking off tasks and more about leading your product in the right direction. It is a crucial part of framing the priorities within your product roadmap. It is a continuous process of assessment, reassessment, and realignment with your product goals and market needs. 

Product Roadmapping Micro-Certification (PRC)™️

Product School has partnered with Productboard to create a micro-certification on how to build and maintain effective Roadmaps. Enroll for free to learn how to communicate the product vision and strategy to your stakeholders and customers.

Updated: September 11, 2024

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