You're torn between new features and critical bugs. How do you prioritize effectively?

Business Impact: Determine how each new feature or bug fix impacts business goals, revenue, and customer satisfaction. User Impact: Evaluate how many users are affected by a bug or will benefit from a new feature.

Critical bugs are of highest priority! In medical device industry, addressing a bug is of utmost importance because an unaddressed bug might impact end patient safety. Bug is basically any kind of issue with product (performance, usability, security etc.). Therefore, it is essential to work on the bug first as it will boil down to enhancement in customer satisfaction.

Critical bugs are always of highest priority. You must keep your promises to your customers. New features are your future promises. People must trust to your promises and your tools.

Both need to be considered against how broad the impact is. Are these bugs reported across several/many customers or one in particular? The same is true for new feature development. Does this land with one customer, or does the request span many? In this day and age, I would lean towards the solution that improves retention. It's far more expensive to land and launch a new customer, so retention should be prioritized.

If a bug is truly critical (high financial, security, customer experience, brand identity impact) then the proper action would be to mitigate the issue and then seek a permanent solution which can be worked into regular sprint work with the appropriate priority. Modern devops teams have an established error budget which should also be the guiding light as it comes to when feature work should be paused and bug fixing becomes the focus. Of course, all of this is dependent upon the level of maturity with regards to service excellence and the general acceptance of a "run-first" way of working.

Engage with users through surveys, reviews, and direct communication to gauge their priorities. Consider the impact on user retention and acquisition, prioritizing fixes and features that enhance overall satisfaction and loyalty. Balance short-term fixes with long-term feature development by aligning with the company’s strategic goals while keeping the user perspective at the forefront. By making decisions grounded in user feedback, you ensure that your priorities align with what matters most to your audience, fostering a positive and reliable user experience.

One thing I think would be helpful is to analyze user feedback to understand if a bug is widespread and causing significant frustration. Then, look for feature requests that align with user needs. If a bug will take longer to fix, it is important to inform users about the timeline and potential workarounds.

Release features and MVPs as soon as possible to understand their impact on your clients. Utilize journey metrics (funnels and behavior tags), HTTP error codes, latency, and other performance indicators to gauge how your app is performing. Additionally, consider launching quick surveys to gather direct feedback from your clients.

Testing existing user solutions is critical in any development process — Teams' often use shortcuts/alternatives to achieve tasks on their terms in the most efficient way. These observations should directly feed into the product being built. With the above, feedback should be solicited throughout the build process from these user groups in focus — This will ensure you are on track, iterpreting the insights gained via the above methods appropriately.

One thing I think would be helpful is to analyze user feedback to understand if a bug is widespread and causing significant frustration. Then, look for feature requests that align with user needs. It a bug will take longer to fix, it is important to inform users about the timeline and potential workarounds.

This is crucial and often overlooked by non technical teams. The key is to tie the impact to KPI’s which will help with ranking vs new features.

One of the most powerful tools for any Engineering Manager is keeping track of technical debt. When technical debt is under control, you should encounter fewer problems. However, if it’s not managed properly, the likelihood of higher maintenance costs and poor user experience increases significantly. Engineering leads need to understand that advocating for space in the backlog to address technical debt is as crucial as prioritizing requests from any other stakeholder.

Addressing technical debt is crucial in product development as it refers to the additional work arising from choosing quick fixes over optimal solutions. Like any debt, technical debt accumulates over time, potentially making product changes unfeasible in the medium to long term due to its volume. Managing the product backlog to balance new features with maintenance and technical debt is key for effective product ownership. If unchecked, technical debt can lead to a fragile, bug-prone system, making it difficult to implement new features in the future, thus maintaining a healthy codebase is essential for sustainable growth.

Addressing technical debt is crucial for maintaining a robust and scalable codebase. Here are some effective ways we tackle it in our team: Regular Code Reviews: Conduct frequent code reviews to identify and address technical debt early. Refactoring: Continuously refactor code to improve structure and readability without changing functionality. Documentation: Maintain clear and comprehensive documentation to aid future development and reduce misunderstandings. Prioritization: Treat technical debt items as part of the backlog and prioritize them alongside new features and bug fixes. Standards: Establish and enforce coding standards to prevent the introduction of new technical debt.

In my experience, mixing external and internal development teams is critical here. Often, internal teams can drive the maintenance narrative, responding to user tickets and day-to-day errors. We look to external resources to drive the heavy lifting on new features, carefully managed by internal leaders.

Misallocation of resources stemming from an inaccurate understanding of team capabilities led to projects being delayed. Project delays lead to cost overrun per project. Missing out on launching new features, enhancements, and products on schedule also had an impact on revenue in terms of opportunity cost and customer satisfaction.

We all experience the tension between adding new features and fixing critical bugs. I prioritize by assessing the impact on users. In one project, we faced this dilemma: users loved our new feature ideas, but a major bug was causing crashes. We decided to address the critical bug first because it directly affected user experience and trust. Meanwhile, we communicated our plan and timeline to users, explaining why we were fixing the bug before rolling out new features. This approach maintained user trust and ensured a stable product foundation before introducing enhancements.

This is where the role of product quality assurance (QA) becomes crucial. Thorough testing during development minimizes bugs and deficiencies, reducing post-release maintenance costs and improving overall product quality. This also prevents the risk of customers encountering the malfunctions first. With efficient QA, the focus can be shifted more towards developing new features rather than fixing bugs.

"When torn between new features and critical bugs, always think in terms of risk. What poses the greatest threat to your company's existence right now? Critical bugs can be silent killers. They erode user trust, bleed customers, and can spiral into PR nightmares. Ignored long enough, they become existential risks. New features, while exciting, rarely make or break a company overnight. The risk of not shipping a feature is usually opportunity cost – painful, but rarely fatal. Prioritize based on potential downside. Fix the bugs that could sink you. Ship the features that could 10x you. Ignore the rest. Trust your instincts but verify with data.

Four Points: - Time to solve - Costs - Layoff - Image damage Find the easy way to watch from different points ( user, developer, customer and employee )! You need the whole overview, before you make your decision!

Regular Iterative reviews and priority adjustments based on changing circumstances, user needs, and business goals help get clarity. Agile methodologies can help maintain flexibility in prioritization and balance Short-Term and Long-Term Goals. This ensures that you’re meeting current user needs while positioning the product for future success.

With all six aspects listed, I tend to advocate for fixing bugs before applying new features. Focusing on new features first can be equated to putting new sneakers on a runner with a sprained ankle. Unresolved bug issues can potentially become more critical and/or difficult to fix depending on the severity of the problem, the user sentiment, and the business goal. In my experience, but not in all cases, user feedback usually consists of negative responses to bugs. However, sometimes the feedback is about a missing user need. Sometimes there’s a sweet spot where a new feature can resolve both the bug and/or the missing user need. In this case, the solution can depend more on strategy, risk, and/or resources.

Balancing new features and bug fixes is crucial for product success. My approach: - Prioritize critical bugs affecting core functionality - Evaluate features based on strategic value and user impact - Maintain a flexible allocation (e.g., 70% bugs, 30% features) - Regularly reassess priorities with key stakeholders - Lastly, and rarely popular, is to consider sunsetting outdated features to streamline the product, and reduce the complexity of the code base. Sometimes building better products means streamlining to the core user experience. This strategy ensures we maintain stability while driving innovation. What's your take on this balancing act?