Main takeaways: - The reason prioritization is the most important job Product Managers have - How and to whom you should communicate your prioritization - Useful prioritization tools and frameworks

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How to Prioritize as a PM by Alexa
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11. How to Prioritize as a PM

12. My Background

13. Disclaimers…

14. PM’s Key Functions as the team ‘CEO’
• Voice of customer
• Funding
• Aligning stakeholders
• Defining product vision and strategy
• Defining products/features
• Bridging between tech, business, marketing, finance and the
customer
• Chief of Motivation
• And more

15. All those involve prioritizing = making
decisions/forming consensus
Product managers provide the why (vision). They serve as their team
compass, thus, practice prioritization daily.
•

16. And, Prioritizing is what PM’s do
• Elevator pitch to your execs
• 3yrs vision
• Annual goals
• Headcount planning
• Roadmap planning
• Feature spec
• Scrum functions (daily standup, sprint planning, grooming)
• Launch plan
• Bug triaging

17. Prioritization requires preparation,
groundwork and continuous learning
So take the time to do or…

18. Vision → Strategy → Prioritization
The best decisions are made with context. The context is your vision
and strategic thinking.
•

19. Prioritization means complete focus.
Knowing what you are doing and why (and
what you are NOT doing)

20. Start with learning your domain
You have to know the next better than anyone else:
• Know the team
• Know the company
• Know the product
• Know the customers
• Understanding of timing and how everything comes together

21. You have to know your team

22. You have to know your team
Questions you want to ask your team:
1. What is the team’s track record in the company?
2. HR situation (moral level, tenure, career goals)
3. What capabilities we have within the team?
4. What political powers are in play?

23. You have to know your company

24. You have to know your company
Questions you want to ask your team:
1. What is my company/org’s status?
2. Who is our competition?
3. What are the company’s values/tenets?
4. What’s the org chart and roles?
5. What are the important stages/mechanisms within the company?

25. You have to know your product

26. You have to know your product
Questions you want to ask your team:
1. What weakness/strengths?
2. What stage is the product?
3. What are the expectations from this product?
4. What has been done in the past? What worked? What didn’t?
5. What the product segment we are within and what are interesting
trends there?

27. You have to know your customers

28. You have to know your customers
Questions you want to ask your team:
1. What customer segments do we serve?
2. What problems are we solving for our customers?
3. How are our customers using the product? What do they love
about it? What do they hate about it?
4. Where is the product located in compare to our competitors?

29. And, you have to know how all the moving
pieces come together
Product strategy is a combination of all those components together,
along with market reality (e.g. timing).
•

30. Writing this down, will get you the next level
By documenting your vision and team strategy (WITH your team), you
clarify your thinking, you enforce a consistent path, you improve
communication, and you make sure others are invested in the
journey.

31. Let’s all give it a try!
We will write the product strategy for FB’s
search bar team

32. Start with your mandate
You s
You should answer the next questions:
1. What does your team own?
2. What doesn’t your team own?
3. Try to include some exciting facts/your impact
• t
•

33. [Example] FB’s search bar mandate
You s
Our team owns FB’s search bar across the web and mobile
applications. We are delighting over 100 million customers/day by
improving accessibility to different parts of FB’s eco-system.
Our team also owns developing the required infrastructure to support
the scale and indexing that are required for search.
We do not own search on other FB applications (e.g. IG, WhatsApp).
•

34. Continue with your vision
You s
You should answer the next questions:
1. How will the ideal customer experience look like if I had zero
limitations?
2. How will I know that I am successful at that vision? What will my
customers have/feel/experience?
3. What will the business earn at that point?
• t

35. [Example] FB’s search bar vision
You s
We envision a search experience that can accommodate any input
(voice, text, image) and provide the most relevant results in all outputs
(voice, text, image).
We believe the ideal search experience is one where customers get
the ideal search results for them, based on their profile/preferences.
•

36. Define your tenets
You s
You should answer the next questions:
1. What hard decisions will we encounter?
2. What tradeoffs our team will day?
3. What will never compromise on?
• t
•

37. [Example] FB’s search bar tenets
You s
• A s
You s
1. Customers’ privacy is above all. We will collect data only with
customers’ explicit consent and will allow customers to opt out/in.
We don’t share the data with 3P’s.
2. Accuracy > speed > cost. Accuracy is the most important in
search. Customers don’t like to wait, but prefer that over poor
results. We will pay high costs to optimize accuracy and speed.
3. We remain objective unless harm is done. We will maintain
objective indexing to enforce a balanced community, unless
inappropriate content is shared.
•

38. Outline the current state – be honest
You s
You should answer the next questions:
1. What’s the feedback from your customers?
2. What are your product’s advantages and disadvantages?
3. What trends are you identifying in the industry and your market?
4. What past moves you tried and succeeded/failed?
5. Team health/talent/org structure

39. [Example] FB’s search bar current status
You s
Only 10% of FB customers use the search bar. When they
use it, only 30% of searches prove to be successful, due to 3
key gaps – (1) We do not continuously index our context, (2)
we do not learn from customer interaction to improve
indexing and (3) indexing is subpar to non English content.
We understand we have to nail the basics before achieving
our vision.
You s

40. Outline the 1-2 years strategy
You s
You should answer the next questions:
1. How will the ideal customer experience in the next 1-3 years, given
where we are at?
2. How will I know that I am successful at that vision? What will my
customers have/feel/experience?
3. What will the business earn at that point?
• t

41. [Example] FB’s search bar 1-2 years
strategyYou s
• A s
You s
In the coming year, we will focus on nailing the basics,
improving the quality of our search results. This will
support the business to reduce screen time by allowing
customers to use FB for specific tasks rather than
browsing.
The following 2 years, we will build image based search
capabilities, to support the business expansion within
the AR space.

42. Map the next 1-2 years strategic moves, to
achieve your strategyYou s
You should answer the next questions:
1. Are we missing fundamental capabilities? (marketing, tech
features, scale, collaborations)
2. Are we positioned well?
3. Are we looking for growth/maintenance/pivot/new segments?
4. What will the engine of the change?

43. [Example] FB’s search bar main themes for
next 1-2 yearsYou s
• A s
a
You s
You s
Nail The Basics
1. Continuous indexing
2. Learning from customer behavior
3. Improving indexing quality
4. Achieve parity between non-English and English indexing
Image based Indexing
1. Built the initial architecture to support image based search
2. Perform customer research to define the requirements

44. Define goals that support the themes
You s
Each theme should have at least 1 input goal. Challenge yourself on
whether achieving those goals will help complete the theme and the
output goals.
• t
•

45. [Example] FB’s search bar 20XX goals
You s
• A s
You s
You s
1. Increase search results accuracy from 30% to 70%, by end of year,
by launching
2. Launch index learning post customer actions by XX/XX
3. Approve image search architecture by the PE board by XX/XX.
• t

46. “Finish” with defining the roadmap for the
yearYou s
Prioritize all the features/products you will need to achieve the goals
that achieve the theme.
• t
•

47. Push product execution and support with
continuous prioritizationYou s
Things change all the time. You will continue to redefine your
Minimum Viable Products, your projects and even bugs. Here are
your tools:
1. Vision/goals – remember the bigger picture and ask how this XXX
services it?
2. Tenets – when forced to make tradeoffs, advise your tenets.
3. Timing – based on the strategy and customers, decide whether a
product/feature is timely.
4. ROI – Value over cost will help you break a tie.
5. Avoid ”1-way door” decisions

48. ROI Frameworks
You
Value – Cost = ROI
(Impact * Volume + bonus) / (Cost * Complexity – Risk) = ROI
$$$$ / (Investment factored with opportunity cost) = ROI
• t

49. Prioritize the next:
You s
• Low cost indexing improvements
• Advance search filters
• Image segmentation techniques for improved indexing
• Enabling 3P’s to use our indexing
• Bug that prevents customers from searching when entering emojis
• Improved algorithm for non Latin based languages
• Bug that reduces performance and accuracy on iOS 9 and older
• t

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