Team ProductivityGoogle Slides
Impact / Effort Matrix
15–30 min3–12 peopleRemote · Hybrid · In-person
Quickly prioritize your team's best ideas in just 10 minutes. Focus on what matters most.
What is this workshop?
When your backlog has more ideas than time, you need a fast way to decide what to build next. The Impact / Effort Matrix is a 2x2 grid that lets your team plot ideas by their potential impact and the effort required — making it immediately obvious which initiatives are quick wins, which are big bets, and which you should drop.
What's included
- 2×2 prioritization grid
- Facilitator guide
- Dot-vote instructions
- Decision capture section
This is for you if…
- Teams with too many ideas and not enough time to do all of them
- Product managers who want fast, visual buy-in on priorities
- Anyone whose backlog is a graveyard of undecided items
How to access this template
- 1Enter your email in the card — we'll send you the template link right away.
- 2Open the link and go to File → Make a copy → Entire presentation.
- 3Choose a destination folder in your Google Drive and click 'OK'.
- 4Your copy is ready — rename it and start editing.
How to run this workshop
- 1Make a copy of the Google Slides deck — go to File → Make a copy → Entire presentation.
- 2Collect all ideas or initiatives you want to prioritize (sticky notes or a shared list works great).
- 3Have each team member independently place items on the matrix — don't discuss yet.
- 4Compare placements and discuss any items where people disagreed by more than one quadrant.
- 5Commit to the top three Quick Wins and decide what to do with the Big Bets.
Tips for first-time facilitators
- Define 'impact' and 'effort' for your context before placing a single item. Without shared definitions, you're voting on different things.
- Place items independently before discussing — prevents anchoring to the first opinion.
- Cap the session at 10–15 items. More than that and the matrix loses precision.