BA ACADEMY / LESSON
Prioritise a product backlog
Make value, risk, effort and dependencies visible instead of treating every request as urgent.
The idea
Prioritisation is a decision process, not a single score. Define the product goal, compare expected outcomes, cost of delay, risk reduction, evidence quality and delivery dependencies. Record trade-offs and revisit priorities as learning changes. Refinement should make the highest-value work understandable and testable.
Example
If onboarding errors affect 18% of applicants while a cosmetic redesign has no measured problem, investigate the error path first—even if the redesign is easier to describe.
Illustrative BA scenario
Fictional Scrum example: a compliance deadline, a recurring customer failure and a requested visual change compete for capacity. The team sequences the deadline and customer failure, then tests whether the visual change still matters.
Try it yourself
- Rank three competing backlog items and state the trade-off.
- List what evidence would change your ranking.