Product prioritization frameworks are a step-by-step approach for prioritizing product development tasks. The primary goal of this framework is to prioritize tasks based on the needs of the target audience.
This framework assists teams in determining whether they are focusing on the most critical tasks. Is a company’s product or service serving the needs of its customers? Is this product a viable idea? Is our job done following consumer feedback? It is a systematic method of evaluating the equal importance of work, suggestions, and requests to reduce wasteful activities and deliver client value in the fastest possible manner.
Product Prioritization Frameworks
Product prioritization frameworks are a collection of guidelines to determine which stages to remove and where to allocate our resources and labor. It helps send the most crucially essential products to our consumers as rapidly as possible; they are essential.
The bitter reality of product development is that no product will ever be created that entirely meets the consumer’s needs. Often there remains a lack of something. In other words, product managers should focus their team and resources on the most critical stage and go from there. As a result, we must prioritize each critical step before we run out of money or time.
Knowing how many team members to include and what percentage they should decide on which features activities or updates will focus on is another problem product managers confront when prioritizing their work.
Popular Frameworks for Prioritizing Products
A product manager can utilize these techniques to ensure that all clients’ needs are being met most efficiently and effectively.
Story Mapping
Customer opinions and experiences are more critical than the viewpoints of employees in this framework. From the initial process of the project until the current development phase, customer comments and experience are used to prioritize features.
Sore an Opportunity
This methodology includes brainstorming optimized solutions and outputs for the products, questioning customers about them, and displaying them in graphical form.
Value vs. Risk
Product features are evaluated in terms of risk and value in this approach. What is the risk to the company value if specific functionalities are eliminated? The value of the feature cannot be calculated, but the risk can be divided into three categories: scheduling risk, cost risk, and functionality risk.
Product Tree
This is a unique and straightforward approach to getting a sense of all product’s features. On a whiteboard, design a tree with the trunk indicating product features, the outermost branches symbolizing features for a future version, and the other branches indicating features the manager do not know about yet.
Buy a Feature
If a company is looking for innovative ideas to tackle a problem, this framework is excellent. In this procedure, the product manager divides the product features throughout the team and provides them with a particular budget and resources to build the product. When they provide the list, inquire as to why they spent so much money on that product.
Why Is Prioritizing Features So Important?
Product managers are responsible for deciding what new features to implement. However, they cannot carry out this vital task alone. Plenty of people are involved, including sales and engineering departments, as well as company executives. In addition, the opinions of our customers help us decide what new products to develop. However, strong opinions should not dominate the product’s overall strategy.
Their time could be wasted in the process of sorting and reordering features if they do not have an effective priority strategy. For the team, effective prioritization gives visibility and credibility in the planning process, as well. All of us want to work on things that directly impact our customers and the company.
Final Remarks
In order to accomplish a collective goal, product prioritization frameworks are used. Many options are available for a given product, and the product manager can pick which one is ideal for his needs. We hope this post has given you enough knowledge about some of the best frameworks for prioritizing products.