Prioritization Scoring: Impact, Feasibility, Risk, Reuse

Why four dimensions

Most prioritization scoring uses two dimensions. Impact and feasibility. The two-dimension scorecard produces decisions that look defensible at the funding meeting and break down at the operating review. Two dimensions cannot distinguish between a high-feasibility, high-impact initiative that solves one customer's problem and a high-feasibility, high-impact initiative that produces a reusable platform component. The first is a project. The second is a compounding asset. The difference matters more than the impact score.

Four dimensions hold the decision better. Impact and feasibility cover the standard ground. Risk forces the conversation about what could go wrong before the funding is committed. Reuse forces the conversation about whether the initiative will compound or merely complete. The four-dimension scorecard reorders portfolios in ways the two-dimension version cannot.

The four dimensions

Impact measures the size of the outcome. The unit is dollars where dollars apply, decisions per day where decisions are the value, time to action where time is the bottleneck. Impact is honest when the unit is named at the start and measured at the end.

Feasibility measures whether the work can be done with the resources available in the time the work has. Feasibility is not a vote. It is the engineering lead's assessment, the data lead's assessment, and the change lead's assessment in combination. If any of the three votes feasibility low, the score is low.

Risk measures what fails if the initiative ships. The risks include data leakage, regulatory exposure, reputational damage, and customer harm. Risk is scored against named scenarios, not against the abstract feeling that AI is risky.

Reuse measures whether the components built for this initiative serve future initiatives. A high reuse score earns higher portfolio weight because the cost of the next initiative falls. A low reuse score means the work is single-use, which is sometimes appropriate and always more expensive at scale.

How to use the scorecard

Score each initiative on a five-point scale on each dimension. Sum the four. Rank the portfolio. Fund the top of the list to the point capital is exhausted. Publish the scorecard to the executive team. The discussion that follows is the actual portfolio decision. The discussion gets sharper when the scores are visible because advocacy without evidence stops being persuasive.

Closing

A four-dimension scorecard is not bureaucracy. It is the conversation about what the firm is doing this quarter, structured so the answer holds up under pressure. The firms that adopt it stop arguing about whose initiative is most important and start arguing about whose evidence is best, which is the conversation worth having.