Why You Should Use Informal & Playful Rating Systems
Using an informal and playful approach to defining level of effort, impact, or priority is helpful when operating on teams that deliver incremental changes on a regular basis.
While some organizations prefer to use time-boxed approaches to deliver changes, an alternative approach that uses the principles or fully embodies continuous delivery (CD) may align better to the organization’s culture.
In those cases, using a prioritization framework like MSCW would be confusing or counterproductive, as its priority ranking is almost always in context of a given milestone.
Instead, try using an informal and playful approach to get stakeholders engaged in defining how important and sizable a change is.
Multiple clients have adopted a chili pepper rating system, which directly mirrors a pattern that appears on restaurant menus.
🌶️ = Mild
🌶️🌶️ = Medium
🌶️🌶️🌶️ = Spicy
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ = Extra Spicy
The recommended implementation is to use the emojis as shown above, as it acts as a visual indicator where the words by themselves lose meaning.
This is an intuitive and effective approach because it is relatable and tangible for practically all stakeholders.
In fact, it’s so effective that people will start describing work using language like “that’s a three pepper” or “probably medium to spicy” within two weeks of adoption.
When you’re ready to give it a try, here are four areas where you can incorporate this framework:
Priority
Complexity
Level of Effort
Stakeholder Impact
TLDR: Try using a playful system like chili peppers to rank and rate your team’s work when continually delivering changes.
