Score data from zero to five using drivers

Jake Sawyer

Updated June 05, 2026 20:16

Note: The Starter and Essentials plans come with only one built-in driver called Value.

Drivers are miscellaneous criteria you can use to surface interesting ideas or prioritize what to build next.

They're particularly valuable for scoring features and subfeatures in the early phases of prioritization, since they can be used along with the Customer Importance Score to sort/filter features and subfeatures that best support multiple criteria.

Drivers can also be used later during planning to fine-tune the prioritization of features and subfeatures within an objective or release.

Examples of drivers

Drivers are often framed as broad attributes. For example, if one of the core ways your product differentiates itself in a market full of clunky enterprise tools is through a delightful user experience, you could evaluate all your ideas based on how much they'd contribute to the UX magic of your product.

Borrowed from the Kano model, one of the simplest ways to prioritize is considering to what degree each feature and subfeature is simply expected, or would surprise and delight:

Satisfier – Table stakes, baseline functionality necessary to compete
Delighter – Exciting, innovative, or new functionality

To this, you might add drivers representing qualities that help you stay ahead of the competition:

Differentiator – sets you apart from the competition
Spoiler – closes the gap between you and a competitor's differentiator

Other drivers might represent other positive outcomes that could be brought about by each idea:

Cost reducer
Usability
Performance
Compliance
Platform Reliability
Security
User delight
User adoption
User Engagement

One more way to use drivers is to score features and subfeatures based on how well they support the needs of different groups of stakeholders/customers.

Closing new business
Retention/expansion for existing customers
Supporting third-party partners
Supporting internal customers

Drivers vs. objectives

Of course, if any of these drivers represent your primary strategic focus at the moment—and could be framed as objectives that could be considered done once certain conditions are met—they may be best represented as objectives in Productboard. You can think of drivers as the voice of the product team, while objectives are the voice of the business.

Creating drivers

There are two main ways to create a driver.

From a grid

To create a driver from within a grid:

Click Add columns > Drivers.
Click Create driver.
Give your driver a name. Consider adding a description to help align people on scoring criteria (see Rubrics for common drivers for details and examples). You can close the panel when you're done.

Note: Drivers created from within a board will be added as a column to that board immediately upon creation.

From the Data page

You can create drivers from your workspace's Data page instead of having to go to a specific board. To do so:

From the Main menu, click More > Data > Drivers.
Click Create.
Give your driver a name. Consider adding a description to help align people on scoring criteria (see Rubrics for common drivers for details and examples). You can close the panel when you're done.

Note: Drivers created from the Data page won't be automatically added as a column to any boards.

Adding and removing drivers to a grid

You can add drivers as columns to a grid for easy data entry. To do so:

Click Add columns > Drivers.
Click the toggle beside the driver(s) you wish to add to or remove from your board.

Deleting drivers

Deleting a driver or score means permanently removing it from your workspace so it can't be used anywhere by anyone. To delete a driver:

Click on its name to open its details sidebar.
Click ••• More actions beside its name in the sidebar and click Delete.
A window will appear, informing you about the consequences of deletion. Check the boxes and click Delete to permanently delete the driver.

Associating a driver with specific item types

Drivers can be associated with specific item types to help manage the amount of noise in your workspace. Associating a driver with an item type limits the places where that driver will appear and also shows users when the driver should be used.

In the example below, the driver Functionality is only associated with structural items like products and components, as well as work items like initiatives, features and subfeatures. It will not appear in the detail sidebars for items of any other type.

Note: By default, drivers aren't assigned to any item type. When you create a new driver, make sure to assign it to at least one item type, or you won't be able to use it!