Priority poker

Priority poker transforms feature prioritization into an interactive team activity. Team members across roles — designers, developers, product managers, and other stakeholders — participate in this collaborative decision-making process. The method prevents dominant voices from overshadowing quieter team members and reduces the impact of cognitive biases.

Here’s how it works:

• The process starts with feature cards containing clear descriptions, user value, and implementation context.
• Each participant receives a set of priority cards with values following a modified Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21) representing relative priority levels.
• After reviewing the feature card, participants privately select a priority card based on predefined criteria such as business value, user impact, and technical feasibility.
• After simultaneous card reveals, participants with significantly different scores share their reasoning, leading to valuable discussions and uncovering hidden concerns or opportunities. For instance, a high score from a UX designer might reveal critical user needs, while a low score from an engineer could uncover technical constraints.
• Teams continue discussing and re-voting until reaching consensus, documenting key insights that influence the final priority score.

Create a quick reference guide for scoring criteria and keep it visible during sessions to ensure consistent evaluation across team members and features.