How to rank problems: pain, payoff, and how fast you can fix it
On this page
You've got a list of problems. Maybe eight, maybe fifteen. You can't fix them all, and the one that feels most urgent isn't always the one that matters most.
Here's a way to pick that takes about 20 minutes and a sheet of paper.
Score three things
For each problem, give it a score from 1 to 5 on each of these.
Pain. How much does this hurt the people who deal with it? A 5 means someone dreads it, or it causes mistakes. A 1 means it's a mild nuisance.
Payoff. If it were fixed, how much would the business gain? Count hours saved, money kept, or customers not lost. A 5 means a lot, a 1 means barely noticeable.
Speed. How fast could you fix it? A 5 means a day or less. A 1 means weeks of work, or it depends on something you don't control.
Add the three numbers. Highest total goes first.
An example
Say you run a taco shop and these are the problems that came out of your interviews. The numbers here are made up to show how the scoring works.
| Problem | Pain | Payoff | Speed | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Catering orders arrive by phone, text, and email and get retyped | 5 | 4 | 4 | 13 |
| Weekly schedule built by hand, takes an hour | 3 | 3 | 3 | 9 |
| Customers keep asking if you're open on holidays | 2 | 2 | 5 | 9 |
| Inventory counted on paper, typed in later | 4 | 3 | 2 | 9 |
| Want a loyalty app | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
Catering orders win, and not by a little. The loyalty app comes last because nobody's in pain about it. Somebody just thought it sounded good.
The three 9s are a tie. Break ties with the speed score, then ask the staff which one they'd pick.
The grid
If you'd rather see it, put payoff and speed on a grid. The top right corner is where you start.
Pain is why you score it three ways instead of two. A fix with a modest payoff but high pain might still be worth doing first, because it makes people's weeks better and builds their trust in the whole effort.
Do this with the staff in the room
Don't rank alone. The owner sees dollars. The staff see daily friction. Get both in one 30-minute meeting and score together. When someone says "that's a 2," ask them why. The reasons are the useful part.
If people disagree by more than a point or two, don't average. Talk about it. One person gave it a 5 because they hit it every day. Another gave it a 2 because they never see it. That gap tells you something.
Mistakes people make
Picking the interesting one. Building an app is more fun than cleaning a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet might be worth ten times more.
Picking the owner's pet peeve. It's allowed to be on the list. It just has to earn its score like the rest.
Underestimating speed. Be honest. If it involves a new system, a vendor, or getting five people to change habits, it's not a 5.
Ignoring risk. If a fix touches payroll, customer payments, or health records, it's slower and more careful than it looks. Score it lower on speed and don't start there.
Never going back. Rankings change. Once the first fix is in, redo the scores. The second problem is often different now.
After you pick
Take the winner and write one sentence: what's wrong, who feels it, and what "fixed" looks like. Then read how to build a small fix in a day.
There's a printable problem-ranking worksheet with a spreadsheet version, so you don't have to draw the table yourself.