🧘‍♂️15 Proven Product Prioritization Frameworks [2/5]

I’ve gathered every single framework out there so you don’t!

This post is part of a series. This is part 2.

In the previous article, we discussed why we even need to consider a prioritization framework and listed 4 fundamental reasons! In this article, I’ll share with you 15 proven prioritization frameworks to help you pick one.

I’ve surfed the internet and did the research for you so you don’t waste time finding the right framework. But before picking one, I just want to clearly align on what product prioritization is all about to exactly see where it fits in your product development process.

In short, product prioritization is the process of building the right thing and uncovering value for the business and customers which is the main responsibility of the product manager.

With that in mind, I’ve also categorized all these frameworks into 4 buckets to help put them into contexts.

1. Customer-centric frameworks
2. Startup-centric frameworks
3. Large team-size frameworks
4. Famous companies frameworks

Customer-centric

The main factor here is customers. If they’re happy, eventually the biz outcomes will be happy

The Kano model

A product team analyzes and ranks feature ideas according to:

1. How much each feature is likely to delight customers
2. Measured against its cost to build.

This in return breaks customer needs into 3 buckets:

1. Performance needs, where “more” is better. As the need is more fully met, the resulting customer satisfaction increases. Ex: If 2 cars were identical but Car A had twice the fuel efficiency (e.g., miles per gallon) of Car B, you would have preferred Car A. Fuel efficiency is a performance benefit for cars.
2. Must-have needs and they’re mandatory. Not being met causes huge customer dissatisfaction. With the car example, seat belts would be a must-have feature. Your must-have need for a reasonable level of safety should be met. But here “more” doesn’t add much. Ex: if Car A had five seat belts and Car B had 100 seat belts, you wouldn’t say that Car B is 20 times better than Car A (it’s not making you more satisfied). Once you have one seat belt per passenger, your must-have need has been met.
3. Delighters. Provide unexpected benefits that exceed customer expectations, resulting in very high customer satisfaction. However, the absence of a delighter doesn’t cause any dissatisfaction because customers aren’t expecting it. With the car example, GPS navigation systems were a delighter when the first car models came out with that new technology in the mid-1990s.

The MoSCoW

The MoSCoW framework is a widely used prioritization technique that helps product teams organize and prioritize their work based on the customer perspective. It involves categorizing items into four groups:

1. Must-have. These are items are considered essential and necessary for the product to function and achieve its goals. These are the features that are critical to the product’s success and should be prioritized first. Should-have
2. Should-have, are items that are important but not as vital as Must-have items. These features should be included in the product, but they can be deprioritized if necessary.
3. Could-have. These items are desirable but not necessary for the product’s success. These features add value to the product but can be sacrificed if there are resource constraints.
4. Won’t-have. Items are things that should not be included in the product, either because they are not aligned with the product’s goals or because they are not feasible to implement.

Jobs to Be Done (JTBD)

JTBD is one of the most pioneering frameworks which was developed by Tony Ulwick, founder of the innovation consulting firm Strategyn. This was one of the frameworks that came out after Tony patented the Outcome Driven Innovation (ODI) process, a framework focused on identifying outcomes that customers seek, as opposed to products they want.

The merit of it is in the change of mindset when thinking about product features. JTBD asks the product team to try to understand what a customer is trying to accomplish when they “hire” a product to help them.

JTBD ranks your product features based on two factors: Importance and Satisfaction. You ask users how important this feature is to them and how satisfied are you with the current alternative and then plot those in a graph like this.

You end up with three buckets:

1. Over-served — things that you need to spend less time into
2. Served just right — things where adding to it would be great
3. Under-served — things that you need to prioritize.

You also need to think of Jobs in two different ways:

1. Main jobs to be done, which describe the task that customers want to achieve.
2. Related jobs to be done, which customers want to accomplish in conjunction with the main jobs to be done.

JTBD framework also provides a simple way to categorize jobs to clearly align with the customer’s outcomes:

1. Functional job aspects — the practical and objective customer requirements.
2. Emotional job aspects — the subjective customer requirements related to feelings and perception.
3. Personal dimension — how the customer feels about the solution.
4. Social dimension — how the customer believes he or she is perceived by others while using the solution.

Opportunity Scoring

Similar to the factors used in JBTD, Opportunity Scoring, also known as a gap analysis, evaluate features based on importance and satisfaction for customers to uncover features that customers consider essential but are dissatisfied with.

To use the Opportunity Scoring method, you need to usually conduct a brief survey asking customers to rank each feature from 1 to 5 according to two questions:

1. How important is this feature or outcome to you?
2. How satisfied are you with the existing solution today?

By gathering the votes and analyzing the results, the features with the highest importance score and lowest satisfaction will represent your biggest opportunities. It’s a very quantitative and objective analysis of what the customers really need.

Buy a feature (or Voting)

This is one of the simplest where you give customers or stakeholders (internal or external) a number of votes or budget and let them vote on what should be prioritized.

The ability to share feedback is what makes this a unique framework. At ClickUp, we used Canny to capture team and customer feature ideas. The best part is that customers don’t only vote on features they like but they can also leave a comment and you, as a PM, can also discuss and dwell deeper into their needs making it a great tool to conduct research.

For startups

The below frameworks are for startups where speed and quality are key factors for great prioritization.

AARRR (Pirate Metrics)

Help startups tune out vanity metrics and prioritize around what matters most to users and their bottom line at all stages of the business lifecycle. Since resources are limited, the focus here is to build the right thing that moves the business forward.

The AARRR framework, also known as Pirate Metrics, consists of five stages:

1. Acquisition — refers to the number of new users a startup is able to attract
2. Activation — refers to the percentage of users who become active after signing up
3. Retention — refers to the percentage of users who continue to use the product over time
4. Revenue — refers to the amount of revenue generated by the product
5. Referral — refers to the number of users who refer others to the product

Each stage represents a key metric that startups must focus on in order to drive growth and profitability. The idea is to tag and score each feature to any of these metrics it’s designed to move, by static the percentage of expected conversion and the estimated value this feature will contribute to the business.

DIE framework

A prioritization method made famous by Baremetrics, a subscription analysis tool, to help overcome the tendency to do just the fun stuff but the right stuff based on three factors:

1. Demand refers to the level of customer demand for a particular feature or product. This can be measured through customer feedback and surveys.
2. Impact refers to the potential impact that a feature or product will have on the business. This can be measured in terms of revenue, user engagement, or other relevant metrics.
3. Effort refers to the amount of time, resources, and effort required to develop and implement a particular feature or product.

By evaluating each potential feature or product based on these three factors, a product manager can prioritize initiatives that have the highest potential for success and impact on the business.

Value vs. Complexity

It is a popular method among product teams looking for an objective way to allocate time and finite development resources to initiatives based on their perceived or potential benefit.

Here, you evaluate each initiative according to how much value the initiative will bring and how difficult it will be to implement.

After scoring an initiative on those two criteria, the team then plots it on a quadrant and prioritizes it on the roadmap accordingly. This was another main prioritization methodology we heavily used at ClickUp, which was the secret of how we managed to ship new features every week (will write a detailed post about this soon)

So, when it comes to your roadmap, keep it simple and go for the easy wins first. The ones that don’t offer much value and are super hard to achieve? Skip ’em. As for the other ones? Well, that’s where you need to gather your team and talk it out.

For large companies

As companies grow and many people from leadership and management weigh in on what needs to be built, an objective quantitative approach becomes the best way to communicate priorities.

As you grow in a company, you’ll notice that it’s not enough to say we have five P1 features because you end up asking which among those 5 to start with, especially because launching one becomes a major company-wide activity, where PR, marketing and many other teams contribute to the launch of a feature

So in big companies, each initiative will need to have a single score to weigh its relative value to the rest of the features.

RICE Scoring

A quantitative growth-driven approach helping product teams prioritize their roadmaps by scoring features on 4 main factors:

1. Reach refers to the number of users who will be affected by the initiative. This can include metrics such as the number of customers or potential customers who will be impacted, and the frequency with which they will interact with the initiative.
2. Impact refers to the degree to which the initiative will affect the user experience or business metrics. The impact can be measured in a variety of ways, including revenue, customer satisfaction, engagement, and retention. The higher the impact, the more important the initiative is for the roadmap.
3. Confidence refers to the level of certainty the team has in their estimates. This can be influenced by factors such as the amount of data available to support the estimates, the complexity of the initiative, and the level of uncertainty surrounding the initiative.
4. Effort refers to the resources required to complete the initiative. This can include factors such as time, money, personnel, and technology. The more resources required, the less likely the initiative is to be prioritized.

The RICE scoring framework combines the scores for each factor to provide a final score for each initiative. This score is used to prioritize initiatives for the roadmap. The higher the score, the more important the initiative is for the success of the product.

WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First)

WSFJ is based on the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) that sequences jobs (e.g., features and epics) in a flow-based order by measuring two major factors aiming to maximize the return on investment while minimizing the time taken to implement a job.

1. Cost of delay (CoD) = Economic Value + Time Criticality + Risk Reduction
2. Job size (or duration)

The WSJF method calculates the priority of a job or feature by dividing the feature ROI by the job size. The CoD is the cost incurred by the business by delaying a job’s release which is another unique way to measure ROI.

The WSJF formula is quite simple:

WSJF = (Economic Value + Time Criticality + Risk Reduction)/Job Size

1. Economic value is the expected return on investment (ROI) for a job or feature. It’s calculated by considering the revenue generated, cost savings, or customer satisfaction that a job or feature will bring to the business. Assign a numerical value to each job or feature based on its expected economic value. What is the relative value to the customer or business? Do our users prefer this over that? What is the revenue impact on our business? Is there a potential penalty or other negative effects if we delay?
2. Time criticality is the urgency with which a job or feature needs to be completed. It’s calculated by considering the job’s deadline, market opportunity, or competitive advantage. Assign a numerical value to each job or feature based on its time criticality. How does the user/business value decay over time? Is there a fixed deadline? Will they wait for us or move to another solution?
3. Risk reduction is the degree to which a job or feature mitigates risk for the business. It’s calculated by considering factors such as compliance, security, or technical debt. Assign a numerical value to each job or feature based on its risk reduction.
4. Job size is the estimated effort required to complete a job or feature. It’s calculated by considering factors such as complexity, time, and resources. Assign a numerical value to each job or feature based on its job size. So you ask what else does this do for our business? Does it increase LTV? Will this feature enable new business opportunities?

The 3 Feature Buckets Approach

The 3 Feature Buckets Approach was developed by veteran technology product leader Adam Nash. The three buckets are growth, engagement, and retention, and the guide explains how to prioritize features from each of those buckets.

The idea is to place all feature concepts in one of three buckets:

1. Metrics movers — These features are guaranteed to significantly improve your business and product metrics. In any successful product organization, every investment in a product or feature is driven by specific goals and strategies. The features that move Engagement, Growth & Revenue are placed in this bucket.
2. Customer Request — These are features that your customers are explicitly requesting. It’s important to include their requests and prioritize the most popular features. While you may not implement every suggestion, it’s crucial for product professionals to listen attentively to direct requests with humility and deep consideration.
3. Customer delight — These are not expected by customers and we have no proof that they’re metrics movers, but they’re certainly super unique and unexpected. Usually, such features are born of attentive listening to customers to comprehend their pain points, being on top of technological breakthroughs to determine what is feasible, and enabling design thinking to craft an unexpectedly sophisticated and delightful experience.

For Metrics Movers, score each feature (5-point scale) in terms of moving any of Engagement, Growth & Revenue. As for Customer Requests, count the no# of customers asking for this particular feature. For Customer delight, also use a 5-point scale on your confidence of how much the feature will “WOW” customers

Crystal Agile Framework

This framework is one of the most flexible frameworks that focus on maximizing the productivity and efficiency of teams. It is designed to be adaptable to different project sizes and requirements, allowing teams to choose their own prioritization framework, level of formality, and documentation that best suits their needs. This agile framework aims to live by the famous agile principle of “people over processes” where it aims to focus on interactions among people and teams rather than processes and tools.

We started with something along this theme while in ClickUp. We were focusing on “speed” and each PM had his own taste in prioritizing his backlog. We used to empower PMs to work however they deem most effective while opening a healthy discussion around why feature A is more important than feature B, each would have his own supporting factors. It definitely facilitates direct team communication, transparency, and accountability but sometimes, the lack of pre-defined objectives and agreed-upon criteria for making decisions can lead to scope creep and heated disagreements.

For large companies, the Crystal Framework divides projects into different “colors,” each of which represents an extra level of prioritization, formality, and documentation. For example, Crystal Clear is the least formal and most flexible color, while Crystal Orange is more structured and requires more documentation.

Famous companies

Ok, the below are frameworks built by famous companies. The goal is not to share a list that you can pick from, but rather showcase that it’s completely fine to develop your own company-branded framework.

As discussed before, product prioritization frameworks are boiled down to a set of criteria to guide you into making the right decision. How you define what’s “right” for you and your team is up to you.

Google’s HEART Framework

This framework was first developed for UX designers but is now heavily adopted by a lot of PMs in large companies. This framework allows PMs to evaluate initiatives based on five user-centered factors

1. H — Happiness: how satisfied users will be with the initiative measured, which can be validated through user surveys or ratings focusing on how much users find the feature “helpful” and “fun”.
2. E — Engagement: how frequently and deeply users are expected to interact with the product or service, which can be tracked through usage metrics such as time spent, clicks, or page views.
3. A — Adoption: how many new users are acquiring the product or service over a given period of time.
4. R — Retention: how many users are expected to continue using the feature over time, which can be tracked through metrics such as churn rate or customer loyalty.
5. T — Task success: how effectively users can accomplish specific tasks within the feature (aka UX wise), which can be measured through metrics such as completion rates or error rates.

Amazon’s Working Backward Method

WBM by Amazon is more of a customer-centric development framework that starts with defining the customer’s needs and working backward from there to create a product or service that meets those needs. It’s not a prioritization framework as it's more of a product development framework but has, however, been used as a way of prioritizing product initiatives

The method consists of five essential steps:

1. Start with the customer and their needs: Begin by understanding the target customer and what they need and want.
2. Write the press release: Imagine that the product or service has already been launched and write a press release announcing it. This exercise helps to clarify the product’s key features, benefits, and value proposition.
3. Create the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): Based on the press release, write a set of questions and answers that potential customers might have about the product or service.
4. Write the user manual: Develop a user manual that outlines how the product or service works and how customers can use it to achieve their goals.
5. Build the product: With the press release, FAQs, and user manual as guides, start building the product or service.

“Where is the prioritization?”, you may ask.

Well, the fact that you have to go through steps 1–4 and deliberately write a detailed summary of whatever you’re proposing that is solely focusing on “customer needs” opens a more manageable discussion when talking about prioritization. It takes out the temptation of simply prioritizing ideas by having a title and brief description.

The simple act of going through the steps to define the idea is a very powerful way to screen out ideas that are not worthy, which you’ll start noticing while drafting the “press release”.

And even after preparing the brief (steps 1–4) and then pitching it, you’ll get a gut check on whether the audience (usually the leadership team) is enthusiastic enough about the initiative to pursue the idea further.

ProductPlan’s IMPACT Method

Well, I can’t help but give ProductPlan some credit here. If you don’t know ProductPlan, it’s a SaaS tool to enable you to capture customer feedback, prioritize them, and share engaging roadmaps with your customers. They’re one of the best companies that share useful content around product management that I recommend checking out.

The IMPACT method focuses heavily on key factors that are always tied to achieving business goals through the development of successful products by scoring initiatives around 6 key factors:

1. I — Interesting: Does the idea address the customer’s needs and tell a story of positive change with real value to our users?
2. M — Meaningful: Does the idea provide a real value to our users that move the business forward toward its goals?
3. P — People: Who is impacted by this? Who uses it, who sees the benefits, and who pays for it?
4. A — Actionable: Can the idea be implemented with available resources, budget, and expertise?
5. C — Clear: Do we truly understand what we’re trying to do? Is the idea well-understood and concise enough for anyone to comprehend?
6. T — Testable: Can the idea be tested before making a significant commitment?

My favorite part is point 6: “Testable”. I’ve started using this mindset often at Qawafel. If a feature is expected to take more than one sprint to develop (we have a 3-week sprint period), then I challenge the PMs to think of “Manual MVPs” to roll this out and test it before committing a lot of resources.

Wrapping up…

So here you have it, 15 prioritization frameworks to inspire yours.

There are a lot of frameworks to choose from. It’s not about which one to pick but rather about having one! If you don’t have a process yet, then picking one is a huge success, regardless of what that framework is. In case you already have one, investigating the issues with it and improving it should be your goal.

But there are some traps in product prioritization that you need to avoid at all costs to ensure you build the right product.

In the next post, I’m going to share 10 deadly traps you’ll need to avoid.

Check it out here 🙂