As a product manager, you probably have to juggle multiple projects and stakeholders, each with their own feedback and expectations. Feedback is essential for building and improving products, but it can also be overwhelming and exhausting. How do you manage feedback fatigue and stay focused on your goals? Here are some tips to help you cope with multiple projects and feedback sources.
Not all feedback is equally important or relevant for your product. Some feedback might be urgent, critical, or aligned with your vision, while other feedback might be vague, conflicting, or out of scope. To avoid getting distracted or confused by too much feedback, you need to prioritize it based on your product strategy, roadmap, and objectives. You can use a feedback matrix, a scoring system, or a ranking method to sort and filter your feedback according to criteria such as impact, effort, value, and feasibility. This way, you can focus on the feedback that matters most for your product success.
As you already mentioned the term "Fatigue", here is my Detox Recipe: 1. Prioritize and categorize: Evaluate and prioritize feedback based on its impact on the product's goals and objectives. Categorize it into different buckets, such as critical, high-priority, low-priority, or nice-to-have. This helps in focusing on the most important feedback and preventing being overwhelmed by everything at once. 2. Set clear goals and objectives: Establish clear goals and objectives for your product. This helps you filter feedback and align it with your product vision. When feedback aligns with your goals, it becomes easier to prioritize and address.
Once you have prioritized your feedback, you need to organize it in a way that makes sense for you and your team. You can use a feedback management tool, a spreadsheet, or a document to store, categorize, and track your feedback. You can also use tags, labels, or colors to group your feedback by project, feature, stakeholder, or status. Organizing your feedback will help you avoid losing or forgetting valuable insights, as well as communicate and collaborate better with your team and stakeholders.
One method I use to collect feedback is by categorizing it based on 3-4 recurring themes, this helps me identify core areas of focus and guides our future roadmap. I add these themes in retros and presentations for cross functional teams.
Another way to manage feedback fatigue is to schedule your feedback sessions and activities. Instead of constantly checking your email, chat, or social media for feedback, you can set aside specific times and days to collect, review, and respond to feedback. You can also create a feedback calendar or a feedback plan to outline when and how you will solicit, receive, and analyze feedback for each project or phase. Scheduling your feedback will help you balance your workload, reduce stress, and improve your productivity.
Feedback is only useful if you act on it. Acting on your feedback means acknowledging it, validating it, implementing it, or rejecting it. You should always thank your feedback providers for their input, and let them know how you will use it or why you won't. You should also test and verify your feedback before making any changes to your product, and measure the results and impact of your feedback-driven decisions. Acting on your feedback will help you build trust and rapport with your stakeholders, as well as deliver better products.
Feedback items that have undergone research and have a solid business case should be given priority and added to backlog for implementation. The remaining feedback items can be categorized either under the backlog for consideration at a later stage or placed in a "parking lot." The parking lot serves as a repository for ideas that may not be relevant or feasible to pursue currently, but they hold potential for future development.
Finally, you should always learn from your feedback. Learning from your feedback means reflecting on what worked and what didn't, what you can improve and what you can replicate, and what you can teach and what you can learn. You should also solicit and receive feedback on your own performance and skills as a product manager, and use it to grow and develop professionally. Learning from your feedback will help you become a more effective and confident product manager.