Prioritization Frameworks: Make the Tradeoffs Visible

Choose the framework for the decision

No framework can decide what the organization values. Its job is to make the criteria and tradeoffs visible. Start by naming the decision: scope a release, manage today’s attention, or align a team around outcomes.

MoSCoW: protect the minimum viable promise

Classify scope as Must have, Should have, Could have, or Won’t have this time. Define “Must” tightly: without it, the release is unsafe, unlawful, unusable, or fails its central objective. If everything is a Must, the method has not produced a decision.

• Must: non-negotiable for this delivery.
• Should: important, but a temporary workaround exists.
• Could: useful if capacity remains after higher commitments.
• Won’t this time: explicitly outside this cycle, not silently forgotten.

Eisenhower: separate urgency from importance

Sort work into four actions: do urgent and important work; schedule important but not urgent work; delegate urgent but lower-value work when appropriate; and eliminate work that is neither. The value is not the grid itself—it is protecting strategic work before it becomes a crisis.

Challenge false urgency. Ask what breaks, for whom, and by when. A senior person’s late request may be politically important, but rank and urgency are not the same thing. Make the consequence explicit instead of absorbing every demand privately.

OKRs: align around outcomes, not activity

An Objective names the meaningful change you want. Key Results provide measurable evidence that the change occurred. Tasks may support a Key Result, but completing tasks is not automatically an outcome.

Review the measures before work begins. Ask whose experience the average may hide and whether the goal creates pressure for shortcuts, gaming, or inequitable outcomes. Research on goal setting shows that specific, challenging goals can improve performance, while research on goal-system side effects warns that narrow goals can also distort attention and behavior.²³

Make tradeoffs visible and fair

Women of color are often asked to carry invisible coordination, mentoring, and culture work. Lean In and McKinsey reported that women leaders did more employee wellbeing and inclusion work than men at their level, while much of that work went unrewarded.¹ Not every finding is specific to all women of color, but it points to why a complete capacity picture matters.

1. List maintenance, relationship, inclusion, and emotional labor alongside formal deliverables.
2. Agree on criteria before debating individual requests.
3. Record what was deprioritized, who decided, and when it will be revisited.
4. Escalate conflicting priorities instead of privately attempting all of them.