3 Product Prioritization Techniques
Prioritization is one of the most important parts in product management. Deciding on when and what to do next is a critical part.
If you’re someone who transitioned to product from another role, before, you prioritize tasks by choosing which task to work on first, which tasks need to be done above all others and what are the orders. Keep in mind that prioritization in product management is at a whole new level. You must be able to prioritize which problems to solve first and which can wait.
If you’re completely confused about prioritization and how to make it work, There are 3 most common and popular frameworks to do a prioritization.
1. MoSCoW Method
MoSCoW prioritization, also known as the MoSCoW method or MoSCoW analysis, is a popular prioritization technique used in Agile PM to understand what’s important and what’s not. The method is commonly used to help key stakeholders understand what the product team is working on and why.
The acronym, MoSCoW, stands for 4 prioritization categories: Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won’t have.
Must Have
As the name suggests, this category consists of initiatives that are “musts” for your team. Non-negotiable product needs that are mandatory for the team, you absolutely should not launch without it.
If you’re unsure about whether this initiative belongs in this category, ask yourself the following questions.
- What happens if you release without this initiative?
- Is there a workaround or a more simple way to accomplish this?
- Will the product work without this initiative?
If the product won’t work without this initiative or you can’t picture success without it, then it’s a Must have!
Should Have
This category is just a step below must have. They are important to the product but it’s not like you can’t release without it. It’s things that would be better to include in the product.
Should have initiatives are different from must have. They can be scheduled for a future release without impacting the existing things. For example, it could be like improving performance, bug fixes or new functionality. Without them, the product still works.
Could Have
Could have things would be nice to include, another way of describing “could have” initiatives is nice to have. Could have and should have only had a slight difference. Compared to should have, they have much smaller impact on the outcome if they are left out. It’s not really necessary for the product to succeed.
To define what initiatives belong here, think of how each requirement will affect the product and customer. The lesser impact, the priority goes down further.
Won’t Have
Won’t have doesn’t mean this initiative is useless or it never can be included in your product. That just means not this time. You will do this later. It’s not a priority for this specific timeframe.
Placing initiative in this category is one way to help prevent the product from being widened from the initial solution we decide.
2. RICE Scoring
The RICE scoring model is a prioritization framework designed to help product managers determine which products, features, and other initiatives to put on their roadmaps by scoring these items according to several factors which again has four categories. These factors then form the acronym RICE, which is Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort.
Reach
The first factor is Reach, It is to get a sense of how many people you estimate that will be impacted by your initiative in a given timeframe.
You can measure this in the number of people impacted in a specific timeframe. Example you can ask yourself, “how many customers will this impact per quarter?”
Impact
Impact can reflect a quantitative goal, such as how much will this project increase conversion rate when users encounter it. This time you will think about how they’ll be affected as individuals.
There’s no real scientific method for measuring impact. Intercom recommends a multiple-choice scale:
- 3 = massive impact
- 2 = high impact
- 1 = medium impact
- 0.5 = low impact
- 0.25 = minimal impact
Confidence
Although in product management things, data should be used as much as possible as the foundation for decision making, but sometimes you have no choice but to rely on intuition and gut-feeling.
For example, if you are lacking data to prove the initiative importance, a confidence score will help you account this.
As Intercom did to impact factor about measuring initiatives, Intercom also created a tiered set of classification percentages to score confidence, so that product teams wouldn’t get stuck or take too much time here deciding the exact percentage number between 1 and 100. When determining your confidence score for a given project, your options are:
- 100% = high confidence
- 80% = medium confidence
- 50% = low confidence
If you arrive at a confidence score below 50%, maybe you will want to assume your priorities to be elsewhere.
Effort
All of the factors we have discussed to this point such as reach, impact and confidence represent the numerators in the RICE scoring equation. Effort represents the denominator.
In other words, if you think of RICE as a cost-benefit analysis, reach, impact and confidence represent the potential benefits while effort represents the costs.
To score this effort, you will need to involve everyone for the project success like engineer, designer, QA, etc for the information about how much effort to finish the project.
Estimate how much work it’ll take each team member working on the project. The more time it takes to finish, then the higher reach, impact and confidence you need in order to make it worth it.
How is a RICE score calculated?
Now you should have four numbers representing each of the 4 factors. To calculate your RICE score, simply multiply Reach by Impact, and then by Confidence. Then divide by Effort.
Your final score represents ‘total impact per time worked.’ The higher the score, the closer you are to high impact with low effort.
3. Kano Model
The Kano Model is a prioritization framework which helps prioritising features on a product roadmap based on the order to which they are likely to satisfy customers the most.
The utility of the model is to divide the problems into 3 relevant categories, which is Must have, Delighter and Performance.
Must Have
The minimum feature that is expected by customers to solve their problems. Without these, the product is basically useless to your customers.
Customers expect these features and take them for granted. For example, as a car manufacturer, you cannot work on solving your customers’ problem if you don’t provide car’s turn signal, seat belts, etc.
Delighter
Delighters provide extra benefits that exceed expectations and improve the experience. It’s okay if you don’t have these features, customers might not even think about it, but if you include them and continue to invest in them, you will create dramatic delight to your customers.
These delighter things might be the things that will differentiate you from your competition.
Example some people never like waiting while their car is being serviced as the waiting lounge offered by the service provider is in a bad shape. I wish it had VIP lounge facilities with Wi-Fi services, food, massage services, etc.
Performance
The more performance needs you add, the better your product is. In general, customers give a very good response to high investments in performance features.
These are also features that your customers might be used to deciding whether to choose your product or your competitor’s.
Example of performance need is number of kilometres covered by the manufacturer’s warranty.
Summary
MoSCoW method is an effective prioritization method when you want to include both customers and stakeholders in the process. The MoSCoW method is often used for time-boxed projects only.
Another reason you might want to use the MoSCoW method is it allows your team to determine how much effort goes into each category. However, there’s nothing stopping you from putting things into ‘Must have’ and it might overextend your resources.
The RICE scoring can help product teams quickly create a consistent framework for objectively evaluating the relative importance or value of a number of different project ideas. It will help you make better-informed decisions about what to work on first and defend those decisions to others.
The Kano Model can be a helpful framework for product teams with limited time and resources who want to make sure they are prioritizing the appropriate mix of features to work on next.
Of course, these aren’t the only three prioritization techniques out there, and many talented PMs have their own ways of doing things. All you can do is keep testing and evaluate!
