Pairwise Prioritization
Pairwise prioritization is a method of selecting the priorities using pairwise comparisons.
Reframing the concept of prioritization
Traditional systems would usually present the prioritization result in this form:
| Priority | A prioritized list |
|---|---|
| 1. | Task A |
| 2. | Task B |
| 3. | Task C |
| … | … |
The priority structure of this list could be decomposed into “A is more important than B” and “B is more important than C”. Also, transitively, “A is more important than C”.
We’re intentionally omitting the P1/P2/P3 method because the P1 bucket still needs to be ordered, which brings us back here. See absolute priorities for an in-depth dive on priority buckets.
What if we reversed this, and instead of visually organizing the tasks by dragging them up and down, we asked for the building blocks and had the app construct the priority list? Then our interaction with the app would become about answering binary questions like this:
Which task is more important?
Answering those binary questions will give you the same type of answer: what is your #1 priority.
When you’re in execution mode, that’s all you need: knowing your #1 priority is sufficient.