How do you score impact and effort?

Relative to the other ideas on the board, not on an absolute scale. Place the most and least of each first to set the corners, then sort the rest between them. A number from 1 to 5 helps when the team cannot agree.

What counts as effort?

Time, money and how many departments have to agree. An idea that needs capital approval is high effort even if the work itself is a day.

Is it the same as a PICK chart?

Yes. PICK stands for Possible, Implement, Challenge, Kill, the same four quadrants. The name changes from plant to plant; the sorting is the same.

Impact/effort matrix or affinity diagram?

Affinity groups many ideas into themes; impact/effort ranks them. Run affinity first when there are more than 40 stickies, then sort the themes on the matrix.

Whoever owns the improvement backlog for the area, usually the CI lead or the supervisor. They keep the board and call the quarterly re-sort; the stickies are owned by the people named on them.

How often do you re-sort?

Quarterly is typical, and after any big change: a new budget, a lost customer, a new line. A matrix sorted once and left is a photograph of last year's opinions.

Lean Studio board · Improvement & ideas

Impact / Effort Matrix board

In one sentence

An impact/effort matrix is a 2×2 grid that sorts ideas by how much they would help and how hard they are to do, into four quadrants: implement, challenge, possible and kill.

An impact/effort matrix sorts a pile of ideas into four boxes by two questions: how much would it help, and how hard is it to do. High impact and low effort gets implemented now; high impact and high effort becomes a project to challenge; low impact and low effort is possible when there is time; low impact and high effort is killed.

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When to use it

When to use the Impact / Effort Matrix board

At the end of a brainstorm or a suggestion review, when the team has more ideas than time.
To agree the scope of a kaizen event: the implement quadrant is the event, the challenge quadrant is the follow-up.
When a manager wants the big project and the team wants the quick wins, to show both on one board.
Once a quarter, to re-sort the improvement backlog.
At the end of an 8 wastes walk, to sort the examples before anyone picks a favourite.

What is on the board

1
Implement
High impact, low effort: do these first.
2
Challenge
High impact, high effort: plan them as projects with an owner.
3
Possible
Low impact, low effort: fill-in work when there is time.
4
Kill
Low impact, high effort: say no and say why.

Running it

How to run an Impact / Effort Matrix session

1
Bring the ideas on stickies, ideally 15 to 40 after an affinity diagram has merged the duplicates, and the people who would do the work. Typically 45 minutes.
2
Place the most obvious quick win and the most obvious big project first, to set what the corners mean for this board.
3
Sort by impact first, top or bottom, in silence. Then slide each sticky left or right by effort: time, money and how many departments must agree.
4
Talk only about the stickies near the lines. Those are the decisions; the corners sort themselves.
5
Everything in implement gets an owner and a date before the session ends. Challenge stickies get a sponsor and go to a project board. Kill stickies get a sentence saying why, back to whoever raised them.
6
Re-sort once a quarter: effort changes when a budget opens, and impact changes when a customer does.
7
Good output: a short implement list with names, two or three challenges with sponsors, and an honest kill quadrant.

Worked example · sample data

Worked example

The sample matrix sorts six ideas from a brainstorm. Implement, high impact and low effort, holds a roll holder on the label rack and a second charger at station 4: both fix a daily irritation and cost little, so both left the session with an owner. Challenge, high impact and high effort, holds the off-line die pre-heat stand and dehumidifying the coating booth: real gains, real money, so each got a sponsor and a place on the project board. Possible holds the bigger font on the pick list, worth doing when someone has an hour. Kill holds moving the whole cell to bay 4: weeks of disruption for a gain nobody could quantify. The team wrote that reason on the sticky and returned it to the person who suggested it.

The board shown at the top of this page, read through. Invented data, not a customer.

Common mistakes

Scoring on absolute scales. Sort relative to the other ideas on the board.
Everything ends up high impact, because nobody wants to say their idea is small. Force the ranking.
Ignoring the challenge quadrant. That is where the big gains are; it needs sponsors, not neglect.
No owners for the implement quadrant, so the quick wins are still quick wins next quarter.
Deleting the kill stickies. Keep them visible with the reason, or the same ideas come back.
Confusing cost with effort. A $2,000 part that arrives in a day is low effort; a free change that needs three departments to agree is high.

How it works in Lean Studio

1
Start from the Impact / Effort Matrix template: a 2×2 grid with effort across the bottom and impact up the side.
2
Write each idea on a sticky and place it by impact first, then slide it left or right by effort; argue about the ones near the lines.
3
Give every sticky in Implement an owner and a date before the session ends, and move the Challenge ones to a project board.
4
Save the finished board to My templates so the next team starts from your version.

Lean Studio boards are drawn with stickies, text, shapes (rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, diamond), arrows and charts, and any board can carry the 15 data widgets, from a scorecard to a kanban. See all widgets and boards.

Also in LeanSuite

Where it goes next in LeanSuite

LeanSuite's Idea Management turns frontline suggestions into reviewed, approved and tracked improvements.

Challenge items become Kaizen projects with owners, phases, due dates and projected against actual savings; implement items can run as quick Kaizens. Kaizen & Projects
When the ideas came from the floor, Idea Management is where they were submitted and reviewed, and an approved idea becomes a Kaizen project with the link to the original idea kept. Idea Management
Lean AI groups similar submitted ideas and shows how alike they are, so related suggestions are reviewed together, which does the merging before the sort. Idea Management

See Idea Management

Open this board in LeanSuite

Impact / Effort Matrix is one of the 30 ready-made boards in Lean Studio, LeanSuite's whiteboard. Try the interactive demo in your browser with sample data, or pilot LeanSuite on your own lines for 90 days, with the setup done by our team.

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