Create your own prioritization formulas

Pricing plan: Pro and Up

Formulas provide a single number with flexible calculations that allow product makers and stakeholders to help them decide the most valuable feature to build next and sort their backlog based on that metric.

In this article:

Creating your own formulas

To add your own formulas to the Features board, follow these steps:

  1. Click the AddColumnButton.svg Add columns button.
  2. Click on Formulas (formulas.svg) in the sidebar.
  3. Click Add Formula
  4. Name your formula and add a description (optional)
  5. Insert the formula equation; you can choose among existing numeric fields, the default Effort field, the User Impact Score, or create new custom number fields.
  6. If the formula is valid, you'll see: Formula is saved and valid.

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Adding formulas to the Features board

You can find all formulas you've created under Formulas (formulas.svg).

Here you will also find two templates that make it easier to get started:

  • RICE score template - RICE stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. It is a simple and well-known standard that is easy to get started with.
  • WSJF template - WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) is the prioritization method used in the SAFe framework (Scaled Agile Framework).

To add a formula to the Features board, toggle it on:

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Assigning values to the formulas' fields

After you have enabled the formula on your features board, you can now set a value for each field that makes the formula.

To do that, on your features board, enter a numeric value for each field, and your own formula will automatically be calculated:

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Note: You can enter a numeric value per field (integers and decimals are supported)

Sorting features and subfeatures by formulas you created

After assigning values to your formula for every feature and subfeature, you can sort your view by the formulas created to decide which feature and subfeature should be prioritized next.

To do that: 

  1. Hover on the formula's name column title.
  2. Click on Filters (filters.svg). Here you can choose to display only certain formula's values on your features board or you can sort the formula by clicking on Sort (_Sort.svg).
  3. Click on Clear (FilterClear.svg) to remove any filters you applied:

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Removing formulas from the Features board

To remove the formula from your features board, follow these steps:

  1. Click the AddColumnButton.svg Add columns button.
  2. Click on Formulas (formulas.svg) in the sidebar navigation, and toggle off your formula.
  3. Then, if you want to remove all the custom field columns, click on each of them and toggle them off one by one:

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Aggregation of the formulas

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Formulas aggregate on the component and product level. The current limitation is that subfeatures formula values do not aggregate into the features formula values.

Limitations

  • It's not possible to use Segments in your formula.
  • It's not possible to use Drivers in your formula.
  • It's not possible to use the Opportunity Value field in your formula.
  • It's not possible to use the Aggregated Custom Company fields in your formula.

For more information about prioritization formulas, see the article How are Formulas different from Drivers: which one to choose?

 See also:

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