Overcoming The Worst Nightmare of Product Owners: Prioritization
There’s always more to do than we can handle. Prioritization is crucial to build meaningful products.
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In 2014, I was upset because we were missing our targets too often. So, I decided to talk to the Product Director. I hoped we could do something different for our upcoming challenges. Unfortunately, I was wrong. The conversation went like this:
Me: What is the most important thing we could do now to put us closer to our goals?
Director: Well. That’s a good question. We have many projects to do for this year. Around fifty projects must be done. Then, we will be where we want to be.
Me: But, what is the most important project? What do we want to achieve?
Director: All of them are equally important. We have to work on them in parallel. I know, it’s challenging. But we can do it.
I guess you can imagine the end of this story. It was another year full of frustrations and poor results. The root cause can be traced back to the inability to define priorities. This awkward situation taught many lessons about priorities, which I want to share with you.
“We Cannot Solve Our Problems With The Same Thinking We Used When We Created Them.” — Albert Einstein
Focus On The Whole Experience
I love working with Scrum due to its simplicity. But Scrum is intentionally incomplete because it is a process framework. Therefore, Scrum Teams cannot reach their maximum potential solely with Scrum. That’s where we face a pitfall. The room for interpretation is too broad. For example, let’s have a look at what the Product Backlog is.
The Product Backlog is an ordered list of everything that is known to be needed in the product. It is the single source of requirements for any changes to be made to the product. The Product Owner is responsible for the Product Backlog, including its content, availability, and ordering.
— Scrum Guide, November 2017
