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 user impact 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.
In this article:
- Examples of drivers
- Creating drivers
- Adding and removing drivers to a grid or features board
- Deleting drivers
- Using prioritization scores
- See also
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 or features board
You can add drivers as columns to a grid or features board 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.
Using prioritization scores
Warning: This is only available on the Legacy experience (that means features boards or older roadmaps). It is not available on grids, timelines, column boards, or other parts of the New experience.
Note: Prioritization scores are only available on Legacy boards. On New boards, drivers can be used in formulas instead.
Prioritization scores incorporate two or more drivers together into a single value. You can create a prioritization score the same way you create a driver, by clicking Create field at the bottom of the Drivers & Scores sidebar and selecting Prioritization score.
Each score has a list of your drivers. Use the sliders to indicate how much weight a given driver should have toward the score's total value. You can even create multiple prioritization scores, each factoring in different drivers with varying weights!
Keep the following in mind while building prioritization scores:
- Weights that don't add up to 100% will be automatically normalized behind the scenes to calculate a provisional score.
- Drivers weighted 0% won't be factored into your score.
- It is not possible to incorporate objectives into prioritization scores.
Dividing your prioritization score by effort
Optionally, check the Divide score by effort box to divide your prioritization scores by the estimated development effort. This field can be edited to your board from Add column > Default fields > Effort. Effort values can also be synced with Jira story points, if configured.