Participants:
Time to run:

Importance / Difficulty Matrix template

A way to arrange items by relative importance and difficulty

Importance / Difficulty Matrix

Use this design thinking framework to prioritize items quickly so that you can take action faster.

Force-ranking impact and difficulty separately helps facilitate deliberation and resolve differing opinions, helping your team develop a plan of action.

The importance/difficulty template helps you:

  • Quickly prioritize tasks and take action

  • Understand the relative difficulty of tasks

  • Get broad team alignment on action items

How to use the importance/difficulty template

To get the most out of the importance/difficulty template, follow the below steps.

Step 1: Assemble 10-15 tasks or ideas that you’re looking to prioritize with your team

This matrix is ideal for a batch of ideas, tasks, or small projects in the range of 10-15 items, enabling your team to quickly assess each one based on their importance to your overall goals versus how difficult they are to accomplish.

Step 2: Map each task according to its relative importance and difficulty

Use the framework to assign each task or idea to its corresponding level of importance and difficulty, across four quadrants: Quick wins (low difficulty, low impact), best bets (high impact, low difficulty), low priority (high difficulty, low impact), and moonshots (high difficulty, high impact).

Note: Avoid simply dropping tasks into the quadrants — make sure you debate and discuss the relative merits of each idea with your team, and carefully determine where it should land within the matrix.

Tips for running an importance/difficulty template exercise

To run a successful task prioritization exercise, you should:

  • Narrow your focus to a range of tasks or ideas between 10-20 items, and time-box your discussions to keep the session moving

  • Use features like tags for sticky notes and use comments to help capture individual feedback on tasks, and anonymous voting to help determine the best way to move forward

  • Once you’ve assigned each task or idea to a quadrant, get aligned with your team on action items and delegate responsibilities

The Mural visual collaboration platform makes task prioritization transparent and simple

With Mural, your whole team can easily get involved and engaged in the process, as you discuss and assign priorities to all your tasks and delegate responsibilities across team members.
Sticky notes & text

Sticky notes & text

Add ideas, action items, and more as a sticky note or text box — then change the colors and cluster to identify patterns and new solutions.

Real-time collaboration

Real-time collaboration

Add more productivity and engagement to meetings and calls with features to guide collaboration.

Outline navigation & instructions

Outline navigation & instructions

Structure your mural for easy navigation, then add activity instructions for collaborators.

Mapping and diagramming

Mapping and diagramming

Build quick and easy visualizations of flows, maps, processes, hierarchies, journeys, and more.

Flexible permissions

Flexible permissions

Control access to collaboration features with view-only, edit, and facilitator settings.

Easy sharing

Easy sharing

There are no barriers to collaboration with the ability to safely and securely share murals with others.

Importance / Difficulty Matrix template frequently asked questions

What is an importance/difficulty matrix?

Why do you need an importance/difficulty matrix?

Mural and LUMA System Logo Lockup

Mural is the only platform that offers both a shared workspace and training on the LUMA System™, a practical way to collaborate that anyone can learn and apply.