Ordering user stories based on feasibility & value

Once you have completed flushing out the detail of your user stories (i.e. breaking them into their prioritize functional and non-function components and prioritized the components of the story using MSCW), how do you know which one to start on first? Clearly, we don't pick at random. In order to prioritize your user stories in a logical way, we must conduct discussions around feasibility (i.e. how hard or easy this user story will be to complete) and value to the client (i.e. which is more or less important to the client).

To do this you draw two axes based on importance to the user (Low, Medium, High) and feasibility (Easy, Medium, Hard) to complete. You can evaluate feasibility with just your development team, especially if the client doesn't possess the technical skill set to determine if it's easy or hard. You'll definitely need to involve the client and key users in the discussion about which stories are higher and lower value. To keep things simple, only rank importance as High, Medium, or Low and feasibility as Hard, Medium, or Easy. Note the picture below ranks these from 1 to 5 but we will not be applying this level of detail.

User stories that are rated high on importance and are highly feasibility should be built first and should definitely be completed. After planning for these user stories, you can focus next on user stories that are rated with high importance / medium feasibility and then user stories rated with medium importance / high feasibility. By identifying the relative importance and feasibility of each user story, you can focus on what matters to the client and what you can complete with the set of skills you have. Clearly avoid user stories that are HARD and LOW VALUE.

Pro Tip 1: It is very easy for clients to understand this matrix, and it is also easy for them to participate in the creation of the matrix. We recommend creating a draft of this first as a development team, and then review your work with the client to make sure everyone agrees with the prioritization of user stories.

Pro Tip 2: Create a digital version of your feasibility matrix that can persist and be updating easily online using Mural (https://mural.co/) which allows free trials for 30 days.

Important Tips:

All be sure to prioritize giving value to the client over picking the easier things to complete
Feasibility is more than tech and the task of building the story. Consider other elements such as difficulty to design the story, test it, and the feasibility of deployment and user adoption
In your discussion include the following agenda points:
- Consider user stories that are Low Value + High Feasibility. What can we do to make these higher value to the client?
- Consider user stories that are High Value + Low Feasibility. What can we do to make these easier to complete?