🤔 Why product prioritization, anyway? And the story of a crashing plane. [1/5]

The four key reasons of why and when to consider product prioritization!

This post is part of a series. This is part 1.

Today, product prioritization is not a one-size-fits-all. It is defined by a market and characterized by a dynamic shift, ever-evolving innovation, a shorter product life cycle, and even shorter customer likeness. This is why PMs need prioritization road mapping to determine a framework suitable for the task before them.

When defining the perfect product, prioritization is a pre-requisite and paramount strategy devoid of any emotional attachments. Prioritization is necessary because even when a manager has the opportunity to pick every feature and detail a product can embody, resources, energy, and time at hand must not be neglected. Every area has to remain in sync every single time.

So here’s why and when you need to consider a product prioritization framework:

1) Prioritization is a decision-making tool

While teaching at Treford’s (Africa’s leading project-based tech programs) Product Management Bootcamp, I’ve always demonstrated the need for prioritization by playing a quick survival game.

So let’s quickly play it!

Let’s say you were part of 5 member group in a plane that suddenly crashed in the middle of a wilderness, the plane crashed and it’s going to explode in 10min.

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.

There are 13 objects of which ONLY 3 objects can be taken out of the airplane.

As part of the 5-member group, you need to quickly debate and unanimously decide on the 3 objects you’re taking out of the airplane.

You only have 10min, so get your “pitching” skills ready. You need to propose and debate your choice of items and reach an agreement, quickly.

Your life is dependent on it!

The game begins…

I used Zoom’s breakout rooms to jump into different groups and enjoy listening to these discussions.

During the game, one might say we would need the box of matches to light some fire at night or create smoke for the rescue team, others might say we need a weapon to defend ourselves, hunt, and keep ourselves alive. Another one might say, we need the radio to send signals to the rescue team and so on…

Context is key here! During the bootcamp, I used to jump inside different Zoom rooms and throw some info (aka insights 😉)

I would go to room A a minute or two before they’re finalizing their options and say “Hey…by the way, the weather in this wilderness is extremely cold” and leave them with that,

They’ll start to re-assess their options. You’ll hear someone saying “I told you. We need jackets” and another would say “But we can use the matches to warm ourselves”

It was a lot of fun!

I would do the same thing with another room and say, “By the way, there’s a stream of water nearby” and all of a sudden you’ll see the object “12 bottles of water” gets deprioritized and a “lifeboat” gets ranked top on the list.

These are what we call insights and they’re the key to succeeding as a PM. This explains why startups solving the same problem have different solutions. They gather different insights. These insights usually come in the form of customer feedback, market trends, technological breakthroughs, consumer trends, government regulations, and so on.

So as you can see from the game, prioritization is important because it’s a tool to make decisions. And as a PM, it’s not enough to just make decisions, you need to make the right ones!

Just like this game, your product has a lifetime. You have limited time to make a decision and limited resources and options. So quick and smart decisions are essential

Many PMs rush to prioritization without understanding its core purpose. Simply, a prioritization framework is a tool to help you make a decision. To be an effective PM, it’s not enough to just make a decision though but you need to make the right one.

Although every product team’s circumstances are unique, I can make one assumption about you with a high degree of confidence. If you’re a product manager, at any given time, your product backlog is filled with more ideas, suggestions, requests, and demands than you can handle.

You’ll have ideas that will increase revenue; ideas that your “competitor has” (potential to leapfrog you); ideas that are easy to build, customer requests, and many others from multiple sources.

But because your resources will always be limited (just like the neck of this funnel), you’ll never be able to accomplish everything you want for your product in the timeframe you’d like, nor will you be able to satisfy everyone else’s requests for new features, fixes, or enhancement.

Above all that, you’re asked to build a “roadmap” to share with all stakeholders and team members.

This brings us to the critical question.

If your team can work on only a few initiatives simultaneously, how will you decide which things to prioritize?

You can’t choose items at random. And you can’t just prioritize the demands of the strongest voice on your team or your most vocal customer.

You need to prioritize the projects that support some sort of objective (company-wide), agreed, and systematic criteria.

In such situations, you always encounter 3 elements that beg for the need for a prioritization framework:

1. You have Things (ideas, features, requests, epics, stories, etc.)
2. Resource Limitations (resources, capacity, engineers, time, etc.)
3. And you need Outcome (Strategy, vision, roadmap, UVP, etc)

Without these, you don’t need a prioritization framework.

For instance, if you only have 5 features (things) in your backlog and have enough resources (no limitations) to get them done, then you don’t need a prioritization framework.

Similarly, if you have a lot of features and have limited resources but missing the outcome (product strategy, or vision) then there’s no need for a decision-making tool, either. In this case, you don’t know what you need to decide upon. You can pick any prioritization (RICE framework, for example), but it won’t mean anything if the criteria set to decide upon are not providing or supporting a positive “outcome”.

This explains the first need for product prioritization: Making the right decisions!

2) Prioritization is the most important thing PMs usually do

When you think about it, PMs are prioritizing at least once nearly every week as they help build products. It’s one of the most important practices a PM is responsible to do.

It’s so important because if you build the wrong thing, your product fails! There are many companies that actually failed because of this. An example that I always like to share is the war between Kodak and Fujifilm behind the “digital camera”

In 1974, a young engineer at Kodak’s applied research lab, Steven Sasson, stumbled upon a game-changing invention: the technology behind digital cameras. Kodak patented the technology and kept passing the prototype inside the company. If only Kodak had prioritized it, they could have been the rulers of the digital camera market. But, since the idea of a digital camera was a threat to Kodak’s core film business, it was sadly left in the shadows for way too long.

Kodak, which was once the top name that consumers associated any brand with photography, had a brilliant, even revolutionary idea but failed to both recognize it and quantify the product’s value to customers. They waited too long to prioritize “digital cameras” until Fujifilm won the war!

Product prioritization can also be seen in the context of business strategy. It requires an understanding of the current market position, the customer’s needs, and the competitive landscape. A company must also be able to identify opportunities to innovate and adapt. With the right product prioritization, a company can capitalize on changes in the market and gain a competitive edge.

Although it is a difficult skill to master, prioritizing the right products can make all the difference in helping organizations stay competitive and successful, as demonstrated by Fujifilm’s success in the face of the digital revolution, while Kodak failed to make the transition.

3) Prioritization is a key ingredient to your roadmap

As PMs, we hear “roadmap” a lot. It’s this one thing that translates to our customers and colleagues our vision and strategy into an exceptional promised delivery and the most important key ingredient in roadmapping that distinguishes a good from a bad one is “prioritization”.

From my experience, effective prioritization leads to effective roadmaps, which in return translates into three incredible things for your team:

1. Save time,
2. Bring clarity & focus, and
3. Deliver impactful features.

Let’s start with “saving time”. Ironically, an effective prioritization framework frees up your team’s time and creative energy. Without a framework for identifying the key initiatives that will provide your product team with the greatest strategic advantages, your team will spend time and energy cycling through your backlog trying to figure out what to push.

I’m sure you know what I’m talking about it. I was a victim of this many times. You have a coming sprint and dev resources to utilize but have no idea what to plan for the sprint. You’re worried about what features will make the most impact, but have no idea about the criteria that actually define “impact”.

So, you go with a simple prioritization methodology of rating things as P1 to P5 only to find that everyone in your company has other subjective criteria when referring to their own P1 to P5 definitions until you find yourself in a debate table, each one trying to defend his prioritized ideas.

Without a process that you can point to, you will have to negotiate with sales, or executive requests every time. And in many cases, especially with an executive or a manager, you’ll lose!

Does this mean your roadmap will have only winning feature ideas?

Of course not. No product team can be certain in advance which items will succeed with customers. But because an effective prioritization framework standardizes and shortens the decision-making process, the team will have more time to develop potentially great ideas.

Coming to the second point, an effective prioritization framework brings “clarity and focus” to the team. It can prevent ad-hoc requests from claiming unearned spots on the roadmap and will prevent subjective justifications of why this or that should go to the roadmap. You and your team will know, based on evidence and objective criteria, which items to add to the product roadmap and which items to say “no” to.

Thirdly, an effective prioritization framework delivers better viable ideas because as you score features and ideas against each other, you ultimately generate more strategically viable ideas.

You refine! And the more you do that, the more you end up with the most impactful ideas.

4) Prioritization is the skill that most PMs lack

I never expected this until I saw the data.

In ProductPlan’s 2022 State of Product Management Report, where they surveyed 2,200 product professionals, they found that the skill that respondents said their product peers lacked the most was the ability to prioritize.

Not even “communication” (which most of us will think so) but “prioritization”

Taken from ProductPlan State of Product Management Report, 2021

The ability to objectively and ruthlessly prioritize product initiatives, while also having the ability to respectfully turn down requests that could disrupt your product’s strategic objectives is indeed a hard skill to earn.

Developing this skill set is essential to success as a product manager, as it enables you to make the most effective use of the limited resources available to your team.

Wrapping up…

A prioritization system is key for effective decision-making, better PM skills, & focused roadmaps! No product is successful without a roadmap and a prioritization framework to ensure the “right” work is being done.

Furthermore, a prioritization roadmap enables the team to answer crucial questions but also ensure all stakeholders’ opinions are heard without compromising the product’s value to the consumer. Objectivity is over subjectivity when building great products.

If you’re convinced by now, I’m sure you’re thinking

ok, how should I build a prioritization framework?

Well, you don’t have to. Great companies and experts already did.

In the next post, I’m going to summarize 15 potential prioritization frameworks. Check it out here.