Whiteboard PromptsBacklog prioritization with RICE on Claude Whiteboards
Score up to 20 backlog items with RICE, place them on an impact/effort grid, challenge the surprises and draw a cut line at your team's capacity.
Use it when: Before quarterly or sprint planning, when a PM and 3 to 8 people from product, design and engineering must agree what gets built next.
Backlog prioritization
What you type here fills every prompt below and stays in this browser.
- 0′Lay out the board
- 3′Load the candidates
- 8′Agree the scales
- 12′Score Reach and Effort
- 24′Score Impact and Confidence
- 34′Calculate and rank
- 38′Place items on the grid
- 43′Challenge the surprises
- 52′Draw the cut line
Agenda, 60 minutes. Click a time to jump to its step.
Before the meeting
- Export up to 20 candidate items from Jira, Linear or your tracker as a plain list, one per line. Claude only sees what is on the board, not your connected apps, so the list has to be pasted.
- Ask the PM to bring a Reach number for each item from analytics, and the engineering lead a rough Effort in person-months. Scoring from memory doubles the time of step 4.
- Agree the team's real capacity for the period with the engineering manager before the session, after holidays, on-call and maintenance work are taken out.
- 0–3 min
Lay out the board
Run this before people join. Check that the table is in the middle and the grid on the right has its four quadrant labels.
Start a whiteboard to prioritize the Q1 2027 backlog for the Quillpay invoicing app. Across the top, add a title and a sticky note labeled "Capacity: 6 person-months". On the left, add an empty section called "Candidates". In the middle, add a section called "Scoring table" laid out as a table with the columns ID, Item, Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort, RICE. On the right, draw a 2x2 grid called "Impact / effort" with Effort on the horizontal axis (low on the left, high on the right) and Impact on the vertical axis (low at the bottom, high at the top). Label the quadrants: top left "Quick wins", top right "Big bets", bottom left "Fill-ins", bottom right "Money pits". Leave the table and the grid empty.
Board after this stepTitle with the capacity note, an empty Candidates section, an empty scoring table, an empty 2x2 grid.
Steps 2 to 9 are in the workshop kit
You have the setup prompt and the full agenda. The kit adds the other 8 prompts of this backlog prioritization, what to do while Claude works on each one, and 3 follow-up prompts: Scoring sheet with live formulas, Roadmap doc for stakeholders, Send to Miro or Lucid. The same for all 12 workshops, plus the 40-prompt library.
One payment, no subscription. Opens in this browser as soon as Stripe checkout completes.- 3–8 min
Load the candidates
In the kitPut each of these backlog items on its own sticky note in "Candidates", numbered B1, B2, B3 and so on in the order I paste them …
Board after this stepTen to twenty numbered notes, and the same IDs as rows in the table.
- 8–12 min
Agree the scales
In the kitAbove the scoring table, add a section called "How we score" with five sticky notes …
Board after this stepA five-note legend sits above the table where everyone can see it while scoring.
- 12–24 min
Score Reach and Effort
In the kitFill in the Reach and Effort cells using only the numbers I give you …
Board after this stepReach and Effort filled for every row. Red cells show what still needs an estimate.
- 24–34 min
Score Impact and Confidence
In the kitFill in Impact and Confidence with the values I give you …
Board after this stepEvery row has four scores, or red cells the team still has to settle.
- 34–38 min
Calculate and rank
In the kitCalculate RICE for every row as Reach × Impact × Confidence ÷ 100 ÷ Effort, rounded to a whole number, and write it in the RICE column …
Board after this stepA sorted table with the arithmetic visible for the top five.
- 38–43 min
Place items on the grid
In the kitPlace a copy of each scored item's sticky note on the "Impact / effort" grid …
Board after this stepEvery scored item sits in one of Quick wins, Big bets, Fill-ins or Money pits.
- 43–52 min
Challenge the surprises
In the kitLook only at this item …
Board after this stepDisputed items carry a Driven by note and a Check note. Any score the team changed is updated in the table.
- 52–60 min
Draw the cut line
In the kitWalk down the sorted scoring table and add up Effort from the top …
Board after this stepCommitted items in green above the line with owners, everything else in grey below it.
After the meeting
Scoring sheet with live formulas
In the kitCreate a sheet from the scoring table on this board with the columns ID, Item, Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort, RICE, Status, Owner …
Roadmap doc for stakeholders
In the kitTurn this board into a one-page prioritization doc with these sections …
Send to Miro or Lucid
In the kitBefore I send this board to Miro, tidy it …
What goes wrong on Claude Whiteboards
- Check the arithmetic. Claude calculates RICE on the board, and a slip on one row can move an item across the cut line. The step 6 prompt shows the calculation for the top five so you can check them in seconds; for the full list, move the table to a sheet with real formulas.
- 2 more pitfalls for this workshop are in the kit
Board layout
A board with a sorted RICE table showing the calculation for the top five, a 2x2 impact/effort grid with every scored item placed, and a cut line marking what is committed within capacity. Plus a scoring sheet with live formulas and a short roadmap doc.
Agenda at a glance
| Minutes | Step | What the board shows afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| 0–3 | Lay out the board | Title with the capacity note, an empty Candidates section, an empty scoring table, an empty 2x2 grid. |
| 3–8 | Load the candidates | Ten to twenty numbered notes, and the same IDs as rows in the table. |
| 8–12 | Agree the scales | A five-note legend sits above the table where everyone can see it while scoring. |
| 12–24 | Score Reach and Effort | Reach and Effort filled for every row. Red cells show what still needs an estimate. |
| 24–34 | Score Impact and Confidence | Every row has four scores, or red cells the team still has to settle. |
| 34–38 | Calculate and rank | A sorted table with the arithmetic visible for the top five. |
| 38–43 | Place items on the grid | Every scored item sits in one of Quick wins, Big bets, Fill-ins or Money pits. |
| 43–52 | Challenge the surprises | Disputed items carry a Driven by note and a Check note. Any score the team changed is updated in the table. |
| 52–60 | Draw the cut line | Committed items in green above the line with owners, everything else in grey below it. |
Run every workshop, not just the retro
Anthropic's help page gives three sample prompts. Free prompt packs give single prompts. The kit gives you the whole session: what to paste, in what order, how many minutes each step takes, what you do while Claude works and what the board should show before you move on.
| Free here | Workshop kit | |
|---|---|---|
| Sprint retrospective | The whole script | The whole script |
| The other 11 workshops | Agenda, board layout and the first prompt | Every prompt in order, with what you do at each step |
| Prompts that turn the board into a doc, deck, tracker sheet or Miro board | Retro only | For every workshop (40 in all) |
| Mistakes to avoid on Claude Whiteboards | One per workshop | All of them |
| Single-job prompt library | 10 prompts | All 40 |
| Copy, print or download a script | Retro only | All 12, plus the whole kit as one Markdown file |
$19one payment
No subscription. Checkout by Stripe; the kit opens in this browser straight after. On another device, ask for a sign-in link sent to the email you paid with.