Example data. Fieldnote is a fictional company used to fill all 61 boards, so the examples tell one consistent story.
Post-PMF, Karim and Tom sort the 12 roadmap candidates that sales, support and the CEO keep pushing, one hour before the quarterly planning.
What the team took away
Offline mode and the invoicing integration are the two big bets; the team ships the four quick wins in the next sprint to buy goodwill with support while the bets are being scoped.
How to run it
Preparation
Invite the PM and the tech lead only. More than 4 people and the debate about effort never ends.
Send the list of candidate items the day before, one line each. Nobody should discover an item during the session.
Put every item on the board as a sticky before the session, stacked outside the matrix. Draw the two axes and label the four quadrants.
Agenda
5 min
Frame Say what impact means today (one metric, one goal) and what effort means (person-weeks, not lines of code). Write both definitions next to the axes.
15 min
Silent placement Each person drags every sticky to where they think it belongs, in silence. Duplicate the stickies with a color per person if you want to see the spread.
25 min
Resolve the gaps Only discuss the items where placements differ by more than one quadrant. Two minutes per item, the tech lead has the last word on effort, the PM on impact.
10 min
Cut and commit Delete the Avoid quadrant out loud. Number the quick wins in the order you will ship them. Name one owner for the top big bet.
5 min
Close Screenshot the board and write the three decisions in the channel before people leave the call.
Pitfalls
Do not let effort become a tech-only estimate. Ask what it costs design, support and legal too, or half your quick wins are not quick.
Put a hard cap of 25 items. Beyond that, run a first pass by theme, then one matrix per theme.
Refuse to place an item in the middle of the board. Force a quadrant: the center is where undecided things go to die.
Afterwards
The quick wins go straight into the next sprint, the big bets get a RICE score or a one-page PRD before anyone commits. Re-run the matrix each quarter, not each week.