What, Why and How of Prioritization in Product Management

1. Prioritization

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