Prioritization in Product Management
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The document discusses prioritization in product development. It provides definitions of prioritization and discusses what needs to be prioritized, such as products, features, bugs and optimizations. It also lists common questions to consider when prioritizing, such as determining customer value. Several problems in prioritization are outlined, like having too many stakeholders or an inability to measure outcomes. Solutions proposed include using data to back decisions and having sprint retrospectives. Prioritization techniques are also summarized, such as ROI analysis and engagement metrics. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of collaboration over consensus when prioritizing.
Prioritization in Product Management
- 2. When everything is important, nothing really is.
- 3. What is Prioritization “What is the one thing that provides the most value to our customers and aligns with our business goals and focuses?” and is feasible with current resources and time.
- 4. What needs to be prioritized? ● Prioritization includes selecting among products, features, bugs and optimizations. ● Prioritization can be among projects and within projects. ● Prioritization also includes prioritizing amongst technology, learning, time, meetings, etc.
- 5. Questions to ask ● How can we know what’s valuable? How valuable is it? Valuable to whom? ● How can we define the set of things that should go together in a product release? How should we sequence those releases? ● How can we know that we are spending our time and resources on most impactful thing? ● Did the decision we made correct or not?
- 6. Problem 1 - You are an Executioner Problem - ● Your roadmap is defined by others ● You have a “Hippo” ● You have too many stakeholders. Solution - ● Have an opinion backed by research and data. ● Ask people for data to back their decision ● Make everyone accountable.
- 7. Problem 2 - Measurement Problem - ● There is always a what if scenario. ● You cannot measure if you were right or wrong. ● You took a decision and forgot. Solution - ● Always have Sprint Retrospective ● Always measure the performance. ● Compare the two products launched in 2 different sprints with impact.
- 8. Problem 4 - Biased Creatures Problem - ● Humans are biased creature. ● They will prefer their idea over others. ● They will prefer their close colleagues task, over others. ● They will prefer the task they have past experience over newer one. Solution - ● Don’t fall for your idea. ● Try to hear others point of view. ● Rely on data
- 9. Problem 5 - Feature Creep Problem - More Features != Happy customer This notion almost always leads to overloading the product with too many features, most of which won’t make the slightest difference to the customer. Solution - ● Be focused ● Have a north star metric ● Don’t copy competitor
- 10. Problem 5 - Hoomans Problem - ● We are emotional beings. ● We like to keep others happy. ● We are scared to question or argue our superiors. Solution - ● Be Rational. ● Keep emotions out of the picture. ● Explain your decisions with rational thinking.
- 11. Problem or Solution ? Too many techniques ● Quantity vs Quality - ○ Quantitative - Which focus on numbers a lot. ○ Qualitative - Which focus on user opinions more. ● Internal vs External - ○ Internal - Which takes into consideration people involved in project. Dev, Design etc. ○ External - Which take into consideration people external to project. Like User.
- 12. ROI - Return on investment ● Figure out the impact by yourself or business. ● Figure out the effort by discussing with developers. ● Start putting items in quadrants. ● Pick Easy Wins, Big bets, Incremental in this order. There are different forms like RICE, ICE, Cost Value, etc.
- 13. Kano Model ● Performance The more we provide, the more satisfied our customers become. ● Must-be If the product doesn’t have them, it will be considered to be incomplete. ● Attractive When presented, cause a positive reaction. ● Indifferent Their presence (or absence) doesn’t make a real difference.
- 14. Product Discovery Trees ● The trunk represents the core features already in your products. ● The branches are feature branches. Optionally, you can increase the thickness of branches that are more important. ● The leaves are individual features that the workshop participants will place on the branches. ● The roots represent the infrastructure that supports your product.
- 15. Engagement ● You prioritize the feature/bug which all users use all the time, e.g. Google Search. ● Then you move to bottom left to things fewer people use fewer times. E.g. About section. ● Use your Tracking Tool like GA, Mixpanel
- 16. MoSCoW ● Must have — these are critical and must be included into the product. ● Should have — these requirements are important but not crucial for the release. ● Could have — these requirements are desirable but not necessary for the release. ● Won’t have — these are considered to be the least-critical.
- 17. A Quick Note on Tools Part of prioritizing features comes down to the tools you use, here are some: ● Sheet - Tried and true, Google Sheet is a simple yet effective way to prioritize things. You can organize each feature into rows, and have columns for P-value, feature name, business value, development effort, notes, etc. ● Trello - This is my favorite. It’s like a digital whiteboard covered in sticky notes. Each sticky notes has a feature name with a description, and you can assign other values to them. ● Sticky Notes - Sticky notes on a whiteboard. Since people do it manually, and is in front of them, helps keep the focus. TIP - Experiment with different techniques, sign up for free trials, record your learnings and see what sticks.
- 18. How do I prioritize? ● Things to be done by me ○ Isolate time a 2 days before sprint planning. ○ Have data from your product (DAU, CVR, CTR and align with your North Star Metric) ○ Have a Product Vision. Anything that doesn’t align with the vision, is removed. ○ Understand the Roadmap. See the backlog and understand each task. ○ Break the task into smaller measurable deliverables. ○ Use your Knowledge, Gut and Experience to prioritize first. ○ Plato Rule - 80-20 rule. Prioritize 20% of tasks which have 80% output is picked for sure. ○ Have a reason on why you picked a task and why you didn’t pick a task. ○ This can be done on Sheet , where Jira ticket is there, description, priority is there and reason is there. ○ Share this sheet before sprint planning to get buy-in and feedback. ○ Be clear in communication and reasoning. TIP - Share your Email id with support, read reviews on store, check feedbacks to know what people asking for.
- 19. Consensus is the Key ● Things to be done as a team ○ Set up a meeting with Key Stakeholders. (Product Head, Sales Head, Tech Head, Design Head, Ops Head) ○ Ask them to put User Value, Business Value and Tech Value for each task. Can be anything like from 0-5. Total points per person is Number of Items X Average Story Points per sprint. ○ User Value is decided by Product Team, Design Team, Ops Team. ○ Give a cofactor (between 1-10) to all stakeholders. This is dependent on company objective, domain etc. For e.g. B2B will have high for Sales and Tech, ○ Listen to everyone’s perspective. ○ Before you begin prioritizing, it’s helpful if you understand the customer value for each initiative. The customer value should be rooted in evidence that you’ve gathered from customers rather than your opinions.
- 20. Example -
- 21. Tips ● Prepare for unexpected - Ad Hoc Tasks ● Do it quickly - it doesn’t need to be work of art ● Work in present with eyes in future. - OS updates, Announcements ● Ask Why - Why you have to do something, that will give you clarity. ● It’s not about doing more - It’s about doing more of what moves needle of what moves the Needle.
- 22. Conclusion Collaboration, Not Consensus Prioritization can be polarizing because it’s often perceived as choosing one person’s ideas over another’s. When people have something personal invested in an idea or feature that’s on the chopping block, emotions can run high. The solution is collaborating at several levels. It is the product leader’s job to connect with all the stakeholders and communicate to each of them why certain choices have to be made. It starts with developing a shared vision and purpose for the product.
- 23. Treat Prioritization as a Product ● Focus on user - ○ As a good product, your priority should always be user and rest everything will follow. ● Measure - ○ Always measure impact of what you launch and record it for each smallest deliverable. ● A/B test - ○ Try different techniques and compare the output. ● Improve - ○ This is not a one time activity and needs experience, data and skills. Keep measuring the result.
- 24. Thank You
Editor's Notes
- #2: So when Jodhi reached me I had some other topic in mind, but this topic I searched and this problem was so wide spread. Even prioritizing what to include in 20 mins was so tough. We as PM always want to do more for our customers, business and that’s a habit. I wanted to share more with you guys, but that’s the point.
- #4: Value” is the most ambiguous word in business. It means something different to every person that says it, primarily based on where they’re positioned in an organisation. Executives talk mostly about business value. Customer-facing product teams use the phrase customer value though there are still many teams I come across who speak in terms of business value. Finally, internally-facing teams — this includes teams like HR, DevOps, security, performance, infrastructure et al — will speak of organisational value as their measure of success.
- #7: What to build next is usually not your decision. If B2C then by management, competition, market and support team decides. In B2B, management, competition and sales teams decide.
- #9: Don’t fall for your idea. Fall for the customer. Collaborate with other tribes.
- #10: Example of Pixel vs samsung, messenger and whatsapp
- #11: Example of Pixel vs samsung, messenger and whatsapp
- #19: There is aha, prodpad, jira, craft, hygger, forcerank, airfocus
- #20: The 20% of customers that the feature doesn’t work for will definitely recognize your choice to not support them, and they’ll be pissed. To them, it’s worse than if you gave them nothing at all. The 80% of customers that the feature does work for don’t actually perceive the extra value they received from getting the feature early.
- #21: The 20% of customers that the feature doesn’t work for will definitely recognize your choice to not support them, and they’ll be pissed. To them, it’s worse than if you gave them nothing at all. The 80% of customers that the feature does work for don’t actually perceive the extra value they received from getting the feature early.