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I've noticed that the problems I see in prioritization are either due to it being oversimplified or overcomplicated. Let me explain.... #ProdMgmt #ProductManagement
I often see #product managers who want to stack rank features - this feature is more important than that feature, so should be built first. The problem with that is that it is oversimplified and doesn't consider how each of those features contributes to the overall strategy.
Just because two features score most highly in your prioritization algorithm doesn't mean they should be built sequentially. Value can be multiplied by combining features that solve a wider problem even if they score less highly individually.
To make your prioritization method more robust, it's better to prioritize at the problem level - more info on that here. https://www.prodpad.com/blog/prioritize-problems-not-product-ideas/
What do I mean by being overcomplicated? This is an extension of the earlier comment about "scoring algorithm". As product managers, we have access to many different framework options, but the overhead involved is immense.
As a PM, many years ago, I put in place a great process whereby we spent an hour or two every week scoring each feature by business risk, engineering risk, confidence, customer value, business value, strategic alignment and a myriad other categories.
Stakeholders from every department spent time giving their score for each area, and I collated the average in each category, weighted the categories and calculated a score. Doesn't that sound fantastic!
It wasn't. The meeting time we used to do the scoring was expensive - 10 senior/experienced folks in a room for an hour or two every week. There were disagreements on whether something should be a 4 or a 5 out of 10. The scores were biased for all the reasons you'd expect.
Most notably, they were quickly out of date, and we never revisited them - it just took way too long. All the time we spent was basically wasted. I was not a popular PM for dragging everyone through that process, and it didn't help me make good decisions anyway!
What's better? An experiment based approach, where the product team test the ideas which seem likely to solve the important problems, with a short feedback loop allowing "multiple shots at net". https://www.prodpad.com/blog/experiment-driven-roadmap/
We talk prioritization all the time @ProdPad. Need some help with how you're tackling it? We do free roadmap clinics (book in at https://www.prodpad.com/resources/roadmap-clinic/) and there are loads of resources on our blog, too.
