Most backlog grooming sessions follow the same script: a product manager shares a list, a senior engineer raises a concern about technical debt, someone suggests RICE scoring, and 90 minutes later the team has argued about the scoring system more than the actual work. Sound familiar?
The core problem isn't the people — it's the format. Ranking a list of 15 items is genuinely hard. Human brains aren't designed for it. But choosing between two options is trivially easy. Preeority's workshop format exploits this gap.
Why traditional prioritization methods break down in groups
Scoring frameworks like RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) work well in theory. In practice, they introduce a new problem: what does an 'impact score of 7' actually mean? Teams spend the meeting calibrating the scoring system instead of debating the real question — what should we build next?
Dot voting (everyone gets stickers, votes on sticky notes) is faster but introduces the HiPPO effect: the Highest Paid Person's Opinion. When a VP puts three stickers on something, others follow. The vote becomes a poll of who people want to agree with, not what the team genuinely believes.
Live pairwise voting solves both problems. Every participant votes independently, simultaneously, on simple comparisons. No calibration required. No social anchoring. The ranking is a genuine aggregate of the group's judgment.
The pairwise workshop format: step by step
Before the session (5 minutes)
- Create a Preeority session and add your backlog items as tasks. Keep titles short and unambiguous — 'Fix checkout auth bug' is better than 'Auth stuff'.
- Decide on the ranking question upfront. 'What should we build first given our current sprint capacity?' produces different results than 'What has the highest strategic impact?'. The question matters.
- Aim for 8–20 items. Fewer than 8 doesn't need a workshop. More than 20 and you should prune first.
During the session (20–40 minutes)
Start the session and share your screen showing the live ranking. Read the ranking question aloud. Ask participants to join via the QR code or join code on their phones — no accounts, no app install required.
Everyone votes simultaneously. Each person sees two items and taps the one that should come first given the question. The ranking on your screen updates in real time as votes come in.
- Don't discuss items while voting is in progress. Save it for after.
- Watch for items that surprise you — if something ranked higher than expected, that's a signal worth discussing.
- The session ends when the ranking stabilises. This typically takes 3–5 minutes of active voting.
After the votes (15 minutes)
Now use the ranking as a conversation starter, not a verdict. The top 3–5 items are your strongest candidates. Ask: 'Is anything surprising here? Does anyone disagree with where something landed?' You'll get much more focused debate with a concrete starting point than with a blank list.
The ranking tells you what the group collectively believes. The conversation after tells you why — and whether any dependencies or constraints change the picture.
What to do with the results
Export the ranked list and put it directly into your project management tool. The top items become your sprint candidates. You still apply judgement (dependencies, team capacity, risk) — but you're now optimising around a data-backed starting point rather than building consensus from scratch.
Run the workshop at the start of every planning cycle. As the team repeats the format, you'll find the votes take less time and the post-vote conversation gets sharper. The process itself builds a shared language about what the team values.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Mixing apples and oranges. If your list contains both bugs and features, consider running two separate sessions with a cleaner question for each.
- Too many items. 25 items takes much longer to rank to stability than 12. Prune ruthlessly before the session.
- Revealing votes mid-session. If people see partial results while voting, they adjust their votes to match the emerging ranking. Let everyone finish before showing results.
- Treating the output as final. The ranking is an input to planning, not a replacement for it.
Try it with your team
Preeority is free to use. Set up a session in under two minutes, share the join code, and run your next backlog prioritization as a live workshop. No participant accounts required.