Strategic Value Matrix

Frame version: 1.10

Authored by David Facer in 2015, and the reference pattern for Level E Value Model Coherence in the AI-Native Portfolio Prioritization Maturity Model. Derived content, not independently versioned.

What it is

A method for ranking work by value against ease, so that a portfolio's competing items can be ordered on one explicit scale. Every item is scored in two halves: what it is worth (Business Value) and how readily it can be done (Ease of Implementation). The ranking is computed from the scores; nothing about the order is typed in by hand.

This page states the frame: the rules every adopter shares. The criteria and their weights are not part of it. Each organization sets its own (rule 2). The sample in svm_sample.yml uses seven illustrative criteria and eight fictional initiatives so the method can be seen working. They are examples, not a recommended set.

The rules

1. The scale is geometric, and its ratios are asserted. A score takes one of four values: Low 1, Medium 3, High 9, Massive 27. Each is three times the last. That is a claim: Massive is worth twenty-seven times Low. Making the claim is what makes it legitimate to weight and add scores at all. A 1-to-4 scale only puts things in order; it asserts no ratio between them, so its scores cannot honestly be summed. The ease criteria are scored inverted: a huge item scores 1 and a tiny one 27, so a higher score is always better.

2. Two composites, with weights summing to 1.00. Business Value and Ease of Implementation are each a weighted sum of the organization's own criteria, and an item's total is their sum. The criteria and the weights must be the adopter's own. So must the split between the two halves, which records how much ease matters against value.

3. Dependency lift. If an item ranks below something that depends on it, it inherits that dependent's score: it must be done first, so it ranks as high as the work it unblocks. The lift runs through whole chains. A prerequisite of a prerequisite rises too, as far as the chain goes.

4. Several dependents: take the higher, never the sum. Summing would count the same value twice, and would put any universal prerequisite permanently at the top.

5. Ties break toward smaller and safer. Among equal totals, the item with the higher size inversion plus risk inversion goes first: the smaller, lower-risk item.

6. A lifted score needs a note. Any item ranked above its own merit because of a dependency must say why. An unexplained lift is flagged when it occurs, not when someone remembers to look.

7. Lifted scores are computed, never typed. Dependencies are recorded; the inherited score is derived from them every time the ranking is computed. An item's own scores are never adjusted to move it in the ranking. The lift exists so that adjustment is never necessary.

8. A prerequisite sorts before its dependent. Rule 3 makes ties the normal outcome, because a lifted item equals the item it unblocks, and rule 5 knows nothing about direction. So direction is applied first: within a tie, prerequisites come before what depends on them, and size and risk decide only what direction leaves open.

Leaving the ranking

An item leaves when it is confirmed complete at the reach it declared when it entered, not when someone marks it done. For public work, the reach is normally the live page a reader actually arrives at. Done names a state; a reach names where the result can be seen, and the confirmation names how it was checked. An item finished somewhere nobody looks is still in the ranking.

The sample, and the test

• svm_sample.yml holds seven illustrative criteria, four for value and three for ease, and eight fictional initiatives. Two of the initiatives are prerequisites of others.
• svm_conformance.yml holds the cases any implementation of these rules must pass. They include a chain of four, which an implementation that follows dependencies only part of the way will rank wrongly, and the cases say so. A calculator that disagrees with them is not this method.