Straight and... "Yes"
Channel 1: “One of our most valuable partners requested to have A, we need to work on it”
Channel 2: “We have a high priority incident, we need to look at it asap and find a solution”
Channel 3: “Ownership is interested about B. No option, we have to do it”???????
Channel 4: “Competition has C, we need to consider that also”?
and goes on…
Product management can be a fulfilling role, as it involves engaging with customers to understand the issues product can address, collaborating with engineers to devise innovative solutions, driving metrics that matter and impressing stakeholders with the release of anticipated features. It sounds simple and straightforward. Is it? Imagine a list of X requests similar to the above. How do you sort it out?
I have initiated the article with some of the most common examples of “product requests” to come down to one of the most challenging aspects and demanding skills in the PM world.
Prioritization.
This is not much about the “What” - that's mainly defined by your product strategy. It’s more about the “When”. From the initiatives that fall into your product strategy how do you order them and define a priority?
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There are numerous frameworks and prioritization techniques. Some PMs prefer Value vs Effort matrix, some others RICE or MoSCoW, the Kano model etc. Regardless of techniques used, it could become much simpler if you apply two basic principles:
Going straight
The term "snake" in this context refers to the reptile's winding and unpredictable movements, which can be used as a metaphor for initiatives with unclear objectives, uninformed decisions without having any kind of evidence or decisions that are based on a pure gut feeling. Taking a wrong decision today will be found out (if so) later and therefore a corrective action has to be taken most probably by reverting our previous decision. By contrast, "going straight" emphasizes the importance of clarity and simplicity in achieving product goals and objectives.
Practically, you need to diverge then gather and discover. Run discovery sessions with customers, investors, business, engineers, product colleagues. Competition analysis is also another sort of discovery and in general, you need to have a continuous look at the market. Listen, observe and document. And then organize your findings. Narrow them down and converge. Check what falls into your strategy, what the dependencies are how dots are connected. And finally communicate and iterate. ?
Facilitating a clear Yes
This is about prioritizing the initiatives or features that are in line with your product strategy and have a significant positive effect on your product metrics. Anything beyond that can lead to distractions, could have a negative impact on customer experience and as a result damage your product. Facilitating a clear "yes" requires focus on collaboration, communication by establishing continuous feedback loops from several channels (especially from users) internally and externally. At the same time, providing data/evidence based recommendations to support your hypothesis will help you to build the required consensus and achieve product success.
Effective prioritization is a non-stop activity in product management. Incorporating the above two principles into your prioritization techniques will enable better decision making and contribute in delivering products that create value. ?