It still scary to refine what to prioritize when building your product.
This is the question Product Coffee hosts debated on the 82nd iteration of their podcast, where product people share their story around a nice cup of joe.
How about you copy them, and quicky brew your favourite Arabica before we dive into today’s content review on “Rethinking Prioritization”?
Considering their own product management experience, both hosts agree on the fact that the amount of rising issues the product encounters when developing can be a trigger to pivot your strategy. They first ramble about a way to make prioritization more organic, since they think product managers tend to add tickets to the roadmap that teams don’t really understand at times. This drives your teams in the wrong way, and doesn’t give the same value to your product.
Therefore, you might feel the need to migrate things a different way by taking a look back to what is now built, because the product doesn’t meet the expectations it had before. Think of it as building a house with bricks that aren’t the same size. The blocks are the same, but do not interlock properly.
“How to know when to rethink your product?”
Was the most important question here.
Their first answer will be that how you picture it depends on the role you have inside the company. For example, when researching and building, product managers tend to think on a per-feature level, whereas heads of products see it more globally. The more intricate aspects being taken care of by PM’s, there can be discrepancies in vision & prioritization. Being this involved makes it hard to take a step back, and realize what has been done so far.
As a product manager, you have to constantly look at your roadmap and pin-point what you can or can’t do anymore. A good roadmap isn’t just a string of features, but is more a balance of bets and risks, versus the potential growth opportunities it can benefit from.
Quarterly plannings are really important to let you know how you met your goals, and evaluate future ones. You need to draw some conclusive goals in which you have belief (know how not to set the bar too high). Your team knows if your goals are feasible, so don’t ever stop brainstorming with them!
For hosts, doing more than what was planned at the end of the quarter is a huge win, and is a sign that the product manager sets his team to crush it! Taking the time to communicate with your teams, and reiterate the importance of what tickets are on the roadmap is the conclusion both hosts made with this podcast.
There’s no framework to be a better PM. It is all about experience, and rethinking prioritization for your product is one of them. What to take from this open discussion is that constantly reevaluating what has been done is more valuable than blindly sticking to a roadmap. Look at it, analyze what to do and if it complies with what the product aims to be.
Find the full podcast below!
