Do you know what the most difficult thing in product management is? Yes, that’s Product prioritization. The teams of the company ask for different things, and hence it is a little tough for product managers to deal with everything. Which features you need to develop next? Which one to avoid? It’s very difficult to please and meet everyone’s needs and requirements. Even though there are various challenges, it comes into the product manager’s duty to do the product prioritization correctly. If you do this wrong, you will end up building features that will not be suitable and liked by your customers; hence the question will arise on the sustainability of your company. A business requires the product prioritization process in order to get new features prioritized, follow the strategy, and avoid making random decisions. Have a look at some compiled steps you need to follow and then start the process.
A Convincing Product Vision
Imagine moving into a road with your eyes closed! The same is the case with a product that does not have a product vision. Before making a common goal, product managers are required to consider customer requests and company plans. If you want to standardize your product prioritization process, it is necessary to create a compelling product vision and make your team follow the same. When you create it, it keeps you focused and brings transparency, and you get to know where your product is heading and what is the reason? If some stakeholders do have their requirements, you can justify your decisions and can say no by giving a suitable reason.
Process Of Organizing Feature Ideas
You must be having different people in your organization, and they must be having their priorities related to the product. It is required for you to make a perfect process to gather and organize feature ideas. The first thing that is needed is to make systemized product management to get all incoming insights requests and feedback. One of the most important things while doing product prioritization is to get data and hence next time if anybody offers you an idea, you must ask them for the numbers.
Become A Pro And Say No
If you are a product manager, you must be master at saying no because developing a good product is not just about getting useful features together but to solve the actual problems of the people. It’s something that does not meet your criteria; you must be opposed to that and say no instantly. Let’s take an example of basecamp! When they developed the 3rd version of their product, customers wanted a calendar. Earlier, it seemed a little easy to build, but they got to know that they would be required to put in a lot of hard work that would not even satisfy all of their customers. So before saying no, they researched a little more and found the solution for the people by creating simple features, and solved the problem of what they were expecting from the calendar. Being transparent is the best way to be with the stakeholders, and then they will understand your decision.
Look For A Framework That Perfectly Suits Your Organization
You will come across different frameworks when it comes to product prioritization, but these are the most known:
The Rice Method
It enables the team to work on something that will impact a particular goal. It works on the given factors: reach, impact, confidence, and effort.
The Value Vs Complexity Framework
This is one of the most important things because it charts the feature ideas based on the value they provide versus how complex and challenging it will be to build. The main motto of this framework is to help you avoid those ideas that do not provide much value and are too complex.
The Kano Model
This model works based on how the features are going to impact customers. The feature idea will be ranked on a scale that will determine how much investment is needed and what level of satisfaction it is giving to the customers.
Support The Priorities Using Data
No matter what is your product vision, what your CEO understands, what is your framework, you need to make sure that you back all your priorities with data and consider being objective. Firstly, you must gather data by using customer feedback, then go for the survey, and finally consider fake door testing.
Once you go through this blog, you will understand the process in which you can completely standardize your product prioritization process. Doing the product prioritization process correctly will impress your customers and get them back to your business again and again. So it is quite clear that it is one of the most important processes in product management.
