How can you involve cross-functional teams in priority management?

Mastering priorities is all about teamwork. To make it happen, you've got to rally the troops from engineering, design, marketing, sales, and support. Here's the lowdown: keep those communication lines buzzing, schedule regular pow-wows to dish on what's important, and make sure everyone knows your product goals inside and out. Don't be afraid to tap into their wisdom; they might drop some game-changing insights. Oh, and always have a representative from each crew in your strategy sessions to keep it real. Stick to the data for prioritizing tasks. Keep your roadmap visible, maybe on a shared doc or tool, so everyone's on the same page. And when you hit a home run, celebrate together—it's what keeps the dream team fired up. ????

First, we gather all our teams in a room, and we don't let anyone leave until they've agreed on priorities. We call it our "No Exit Until Consensus" policy. It's like a game of negotiation and persuasion, and sometimes it feels like we're negotiating a peace treaty. Then, we use a highly scientific method called "rock-paper-scissors" to settle disputes. Just kidding! We actually rely on data and customer feedback to guide our decisions. But a round of rock-paper-scissors would definitely make things interesting. Jokes aside, involving cross-functional teams in priority management is all about open communication, respect for different perspectives, transparency, and a sprinkle of fun.

Throughout my career and interactions with peers and leadership, I've noticed that even the most brilliant minds sometimes get lost in details or try to start solving without understanding the actual problem. Here are a couple of simple pearls of wisdom that I've learned the hard way: ?? First, always start with the problem statement. Remember - 'If you don't know where you want to go, then it doesn't matter which path you take.' — Lewis Carroll. ?? Second, remain solution agnostic until you understand the problem, its magnitude, and available resources and buy-in sufficiently. ?? Third, ensure you document the key agreements with the cross-functional Teams - this will help you to stay on track and keep peers accountable.

Product Requirements flow from multiple directions: a. Existing customers b. Competition c. In-house innovation d. Non functional req e. New Market/Geo req f. Regulatory/compliance g. RFPs These flow to Product Management via the following channels/Teams: a. Pre-Sales/BD b. Solutions Delivery c. Product Delivery d. Field/Account Teams e. Innovations CoE f. Business Analysts/SMEs I have been using a weighted scoring method that records, for every feature, the per team score applied relevent weightage against that team (weightage calibrated by the product team from time to time). This gives a clean prioritization chart that will be reviewed and moderated by the Product Change Control Board and made visible to all for optimal planning.

The basic ethos behind any business proposal is the exchange of products or services between two parties. More than anything else the need to understand faith and belief is the most important aspect. One gets easily convinced if sales, marketing and other support systems come together to suggest the strength behind the proposal. It has other added advantage that everyone understands his /her role in the organization. However, it is observed that more often than not the ego clash becomes prominent. The role of the manager/leader is to organize the entire process in such a way that everyone works and acts together and remains on the same page to fulfill the objective

The most effective and reliable technique I can recommend here is ??????????-????????????. This is a prioritization framework where you prioritize features based on their potential value and the effort required to implement them. It uses a 2-dimensional matrix to plot features on a grid. Pro: it allows to prioritize items based on the value and effort relative to each other Con: the value and effort are often high-level guesses and therefore be totally off. I would say it's rather universal in its application

Priority management framework only works in hypothetical settings. To actually rally the team AND the management/leadership, you (and everyone else) need to know what is the top priority for the company. This is a strategy problem, not a tactical ones. To ensure everyone is tackling the same problem and going the same direction, I usually align everyone with a semesterly prioritization meetings. This would be done after company agreed on the objective and priority. In this meeting, every team needs to present initiatives they are proposing to hit those objectives. And then present it to everyone. Other teams then will be able to challenge, and ask for support. In the end, all team will have finalized initiatives acknowledged

One framework might better suit some products, teams, and companies, but it's important to remember that they are just tools to ensure you're having the right conversations. There isn't a one-size-fits-all framework, and you can always use multiple concurrently.

ICE frameworks work well for growth teams. Ideally you want to have a weekly meeting to hash out experiments to run based on impact, confidence, and effort. The company culture needs to be aligned so everyone's rowing in the same direction as the north star metric.

I prefer using NPV (Net Present Value), when the products being prioritized have disparate gross margins. When the gross margin is relatively homogeneous, using Revenue as a proxy for Gross Profit works as well to simplify the effort. When embedded or cloud software is being prioritized as part of a solution that includes hardware and/or services, it is important to consider the comprehensive impact of each development. Why NPV? It is proven to work and to take risk into consideration in the correct manner, the trick being what the actual risk is for different projects. Where does the cross-functional team come in? No way to calculate NPV without understanding the sales risk, as well as the development and operations efforts.

One of the approaches that has really worked is the outside-in approach. Start with the market understanding, customer needs and trends followed by gathering feedback from internal stakeholders. Internal cross-functional teams are living the product day in day out that you might end up getting biased feedback and sometimes myopic perspective. So, you definitely don't want to start there.

One of the most efficient strategies for this step could involve conducting a focused brainstorming session with both internal and external stakeholders. It is essential to clearly communicate the session's objectives and goals to get the desired outcome . Subsequently, delve into discussions, theme ideas, and work towards enhancing them.

The first step to not drowning in the huge amount of data that might be available is to define the set of metrics that are worth monitoring. Some ideas to keep in mind: - Be sure the metric being monitored has some relation to your business metrics, such as the KPIs. - Avoid vanity metrics that will distract you from your main objective and can provide false positives regarding your product's performance. - Ensure that your team understands the metrics and makes decisions with them in mind. - Don't be afraid to change; however, respect a minimum period of time before discarding a hypothesis based on a set of metrics.

While I agree data collection is important, we should also find a way to use anecdotal feedback. Often I have “pre mortem” to be a good exercise here. Once priorities are decided, the team should meet to conduct a pre mortem to analyze all possible avenues of failures and mitigate them.

Regardless of the data source, interpretation should be done with the user in mind. With high volume data in particular, there's plenty of noise to parse. Keeping focus on the user and the desired outcome can help separate insights from the noise, supporting the path to resolution.

Best advice I’ve gotten regarding communicating and aligning priorities: - When tracking OKRs (or KPI’s, metrics, etc.) make sure you are also tracking other teams/departments’ OKRs and how reaching your goals affects theirs. You’ll make/keep a lot of friends that way, and get a lot of external team buy-in.

Imagine priority management as a grand orchestra, and cross-functional teams as diverse musicians. To create amazing melodies that play in harmony, one must ensure everyone has their sheet music and plays in sync. It starts with crystal-clear communication, where priorities are the conductor's baton, guiding every instrument's rhythm. Aligning priorities becomes the symphony's score, allowing each team member to contribute their unique notes, ultimately composing a masterpiece of productivity. Similarly, communicating and aligning your priorities with your cross-functional teams is quintessential for the desired outcome. Discussion, feedback and insights are the outcomes of a good communication plan resulting in aligned priorities.

This is the most important action. You need to bring all relevant stakeholders along with you on the journey. Get their feedback and set realistic expectations. That will cover the majority of your risks and ensure the business objectives are met.

One thing I've found really helpful is individually connecting with each of the cross-functional teams to understand their 1) priorities, 2) motivations, 3) strengths/skills/resources 4) challenges and support needed and 5) possible levers and trade-offs. Having all that data beforehand supports in having constructive priority discussions across teams and seeking alignment. Also, sharing the impact of what may not be achieved if the P0 priorities are not met, why they are P0 therefore is critical.

The roadmap has to be known to and debated with all across the cross-functional teams. it is not enough to have the plan-of-record roadmap stored in a commonly known place that ALL can reach to at any time. There needs to be a periodic (monthly to quarterly, depending on the nature of the business) review of the roadmap in light of competition, larger market trends, and the current product portfolio. It is where people know in which direction the team is rowing, and where people can debate whether the product management team is indeed taking into consideration the right inputs. It also forces product managers to have their story straight on a period basis :-).

Remember that periodic roadmap review? It is periodic for a reason: the roadmap changes, as it adapts itself to the market, to competition, and to the company's ability to execute. That said, the method and frequency in which the roadmap changes are a good indication of the strategic quality of decisions product management made, as well as the cross-functional team's execution ability, and our customer intimacy. Product Management's role is to ultimately give engineering a stable environment to allow them to deliver products that sell. And as the joke goes "it the product succeeds, it is because sales sold well, marketing marketed well, R&D designed it well and operations built it well. If it fails, it is the product manager's fault".

In the grand orchestration of your priorities, execution and evaluation are the crescendo. It's the moment when each cross-functional team member takes their well-defined instrument and, with ample resources and support, transforms plans into harmonious actions. As the performance unfolds, meticulous monitoring and tracking, akin to reading musical notes, reveal the progress and resonance of your priorities. But here's where the magic truly happens – your teams, unearth unexpected rhythms, discovering both challenges and golden opportunities. The applause-worthy finale comes with celebration, recognizing each team's virtuosity, and learning from the encore, the invaluable feedback that ensures future compositions hit all the right notes.

Executing and evaluating priorities is a critical phase in the product development cycle. Assign roles, provide resources, and monitor progress with relevant metrics. Involving cross-functional teams is key for addressing challenges, seizing opportunities, and ensuring customer satisfaction. Recognize achievements and learn from results and feedback to drive continuous improvement.

A task without an assignee and a due date won't get done. When the team makes a decision, it must understand steps to be done and who will at least get started on those steps. But don't approach it from a standpoint of "it's within your job description to do this" or "this is my thing, that's yours." That just leads to finger pointing, compelling, and micro-managing. Approach it from the thought of "We have to do XYZ, how do we make sure we all keep course or reorient our course as a team so we don't end up going in a million directions and not make any progress?" That will naturally get people to think about how can they can leverage their expertise in support of the decision while also making sure we stay aligned the whole way.

Involving cross functional teams at strategic times in the development life cycle is key to keeping them updated on challenges and any expected delays. Moreover, it helps them meet their objectives. For example, the marketing team can align a campaign with the expected launch date of a new feature. Similarly, the content team can fine tune their content calender to sync with the launch of a product.

In conclusion, the art of successful priority management with cross-functional teams is quite similar to conducting a symphony. By executing meticulously, fostering collaboration, and evaluating with precision, you create a masterpiece of productivity. As each team member plays their part and embraces challenges as opportunities, you can achieve not just product success but also nurture a culture of innovation and continuous improvement. With each performance, we celebrate the achievements of our teams and refine our score, ensuring that the future holds even more harmonious compositions.

I find that we are missing one important perspective here, connected to the prioritization of the outcome, which is a product strategy. In my experience having a clear product strategy, aligned with the business strategy, is key to be able to choose the right outcome, and especially do it at scale

I believe, finding the right balance between going with structured approach (Understanding the right framework) and also, not solely depending on the framework keeping an open mind to adapt to the business need. Adding to the first point, more often than not, a problem statement and a solution gets intepreted in different way with different stakeholder considering their background, so it is important to avoid jargons while defining the problem statement and keeping it simple.

All in all, priority management is often times obvious and not the most challenging part if the team is on par with the market and the business the company is into. But it can be really challenging if the environment is really dynamic and uncertain. The key aspects in which the priorities differ often demand aligning company priorities to the public, governmental, and social priorities and value systems in which the product or service is offered.

Each product or feature developed will have significant milestones along the way. It is important to pause at each to reflect, decide to pivot or stay the course, and celebrate. Developing a rhythm that allows you to do those steps as part of the system will lead to significant satisfaction and team spirit throughout your cross functional team.