This article is the entry for day 20 in the KINTO Technologies Advent Calendar 2024🎅🎄

How We Applied the Impact/Effort Matrix to Improve Cross-Team Interaction

Hello! We are Maya and Kinoshita, team members of KINTO Technologies' Developer Relations (DevRel) Group.

Introduction

We previously held an internal event in Jimbocho to improve office communication and foster stronger ties between teams.
Here’s the article from when we held the event ↓
https://blog.kinto-technologies.com/posts/2023-09-19-JimbochoISM/

For this event, we used an Impact/Effort Matrix during the planning phase to decide on the activities.
This helped us organize ideas to make the event more engaging and clarify task priorities.
As a result, we were able to smoothly run multiple events.

In this article, we’ll share our approach to planning, running, and reflecting on events using the Impact/Effort Matrix.
We hope this article will be useful for managing your project, for event planning and hope you enjoy the read till the end.

About the Impact/Effort Matrix

The Impact/Effort Matrix is a simple yet effective tool for efficiently determining the priority of projects and tasks.
By categorizing tasks or ideas along two axes (Impact and Effort) this matrix can provide a clear, visual way to decide where to focus your team resources.

Basic Structure

The Impact/Effort Matrix consists of four quadrants:

1. Quick Wins:

   • Tasks that deliver high impact with minimal effort.
   • They should be prioritized and executed quickly.

2. Major Projects:

   • Tasks that offer high impact but require significant effort.
   • Resource planning is crucial and should be addressed strategically.

3. Fill-ins:

   • Tasks that have low impact and require minimal effort.
   • These should be tackled when there’s extra capacity, but they’re lower priority.

4. Parking Lot:

   • Tasks that offer low impact and require a lot of effort.
   • These should generally be avoided.

For more details, you can check the Miro template description page.

Why We Decided to Use the Impact/Effort Matrix

After we held the first Jimbocho Information Sharing session, we received quite positive feedback from our collagues.
However, not all participants felt a sense of unity, so we asked ourselves: how can we create more of a lively and energetic atmosphere? So we wanted to brainstorm this together.
While discussing among the organizing team, we clarified our goals and selected the tasks to focus on and those to exclude.
During this process, we explored appropriate methods to share task priorities with the team, and decided to use the Impact/Effort Matrix, which some team members had previous experience with.

Percieved Benefits

• Clear prioritization:
  • By placing all tasks relative to each other in the four quadrants, as discussions progress and sticky notes are arranged, the tasks that should be prioritized become visually apparent.
• Easily shareable, with high team alignment:
  • Building on the previous point, the discussion about what should be prioritized serves as an opportunity to align everyone’s understanding.
  • By progressing with the team’s consensus, commitment is high, and it becomes easier for everyone to take ownership and move forward together.
• Team resource optimization:
  • By ensuring everyone agrees on the next actions, it helps prevent rework and ensures smoother progress.

Challenges and Solutions

As is often the case, the most challenging part for the team was decision-making.
During the first round of implementing the Impact/Effort Matrix, we encountered many issues with differing opinions and a lack of shared understanding. It took a lot of discussions to organize the information and reach a consensus on how to use it for improving the next event.
The granularity of the details was inconsistent, and the scope of what we wanted to accomplish was too broad, so we weren’t able to achieve the desired results.

In the second round, we refined the granularity of the issues, clarified our objectives, and narrowed the scope, which allowed us to achieve more concrete outcomes.
As a result, the team’s understanding deepened, and the process moved more smoothly.

We were able to better define the direction for the event, and the second round was a success. We then created an action plan for the third Jimbocho Sharing Session and visualized the tasks on a Jira board.
At this point, several new members joined the organizing team, many of whom were experiencing the Impact/Effort Matrix for the first time.
Despite the presence of many newcomers, we were able to smoothly progress based on our prior experience, and successfully held the third Jimbocho Sharing Session.

Thoughts on Using the Impact/Effort Matrix

Even after understanding the Impact/Effort Matrix methodology, when we tried to apply it to our own situation, there were moments of doubt in the team about whether we were on the right track.
However, by discussing the points that felt off or needed improvement and respecting each other's opinions, we were able to organize the various ideas that came up and clearly identify which tasks should be prioritized.

During the process of making the Impact/Effort Matrix method work, there were disagreements, but by objectively evaluating each idea, we were able to move forward in a way that everyone could agree on.

As preparations for the event progressed, the sense of unity within the team grew, and in the end, we received high praise from participants at the event.

Conclusion

In this article, we shared our approach to planning, executing, and reflecting on events with the Impact/Effort Matrix, using the Jimbocho internal event as an example.
Initially, there were uncertainties and doubts, and we lacked confidence in whether we were doing things correctly. However, through repeated practice, we gradually became more comfortable with the process. Even when new team members joined midway, we were able to run the event smoothly.

We hope this methodology will be helpful for the success of your own projects and events as it was for us.

Furthermore, KINTO Technologies is looking for talents to join us!
If this article has sparked even a bit of your interest, please feel free to reach out to us. We look forward to hearing from you!

https://hrmos.co/pages/kinto-technologies/jobs