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How do you prioritize features and decide what to include in your product roadmap?
🤔 When creating a product, it's important to determine which features will be included in the initial release and which will be added later. With limited time and resources, it's crucial to prioritize features that will provide the most value to your target audience and align with your overall product vision.
đź’ˇ In light of this, how do you go about prioritizing features and deciding what to include in your product roadmap? Do you have a set framework or methodology you follow, or does it vary from project to project?
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@distartin I think your third point is really important--I completely agree!
I usually rely on the RICE (Reach, Importance, Confidence, Effort) framework. It's pretty standard and it usually gives sensible results.
Once I get the list of features I want to build, I rank them by RICE score (R*I*C/E) and prioritize the highest ranked.
We use the RICE prioritization framework and regularly revisit:
1. our model's metrics
2. specific feature request/bugs individual RICE scores (because they can change over time!)
@brianna_swartz For me, the important part is connecting the Reach and Impact scores back to client data. This requires the product team working closely with sales, marketing, and customer support teams to gather this data and understand how new features and development helps directly address client needs. I also believe in having members of the product/engineering team sit in or watch occasional client meetings so they stay grounded in how the product is being used in the real world.
There also needs to be a focused long-term vision weaving together all this client feedback, so all the agile twists and turns are leading towards the same destination.
As a product designer myself, I can tell you that it varies from project to project and requires a pragmatic approach.
Before prioritizing features, you have to consider these things:
1.) The needs of your target users
2.) The business goals of the project
3.) The technical feasibility of each feature.
We take feedback from our community of early adopters. We have build a road-map based on our priorities for the company plus the features that users want!
The most important feature to go onboard will directly depend on the user's needs....
It's as simple as that..
Consider the impact on the user experience, the potential revenue boost, and the technological feasibility of adding a feature. Also, regularly review and adjust the roadmap based on customer feedback and market trends.
Time-box. Set a sprint for say 4 weeks and then work on your biggest and hardest problem. Maybe do a two week sprint. Less = more. But focus on those that are th customers biggest pain points
The best is to use insights from your customers and see how often the problem occurs, and what business value it has. We're using Productboard for it and we get insights from surveys, customer calls, and other places.
On top of that, the best methodology for prioritization is using a feature map created by Reforge - you're adding values to the feature for user value (problem frequency - daily, weekly, monthly; problem severity - low to high) and business value (impact - directly driving product KPIs, strategic importance - low to high). That's the absolute best prioritization technique that makes the most sense to me.
it's important to stay connected with your users, actively seek their feedback, and continually strive to improve based on their input.
That's the best way!
I'm building LaunchPedia - content based website like backlinko/hubspot
We do a lot of changes to our website to increase our user experience and session time on our website.
So, whenever we have a list of changes to do, this is how we prioritize
1. Check analytics for the most active page and work on the things in that poage
2. Check screen recordings to see the most active section on a page and work on those sections and later
3. We work on the remaining things.
Lots of good frameworks here, but I'll drop one more approach here that I live by:
If it's an easy feature that aligns with your product vision and a user asks for it - just build and ship it!
I'm talking here about those features in the long laundry list of things that you definitely should do, but you deemed to small to be important.
If someone comes to you asking for specifically a functionality like that, it might be just easier to build and ship it than spend time and mental resources prioritizing.
And you'll get a delighted customer as a result!
I use a design thinking framework called the Pairwise Priority Chart (PCC). In it you compare each feature with every other feature one at a time and pick the one that is more important. By the end of filling out the entire table, you will find the results to be surprisingly satisfying and having given you a clear idea of what is most important to you.
I highly recommend!
For our product minced.io that my brother and I are building out we focus on the features we are wanting to use most right away. There's also the balancing act of determining how certain things should be done in a timely manner and what you're going to come back to.
However, if you're building a product definitely focus on what you want for features and how those could contribute the the common good. You do that and you're on your way!
In my experience, it comes down to business priorities and resourcing.
The product team’s goals should be aligned with the company’s.
After conducting stakeholder interviews, digesting user feedback, and aligning on KPI’s, we look to understand what we should work on (or propose to leadership).
Then, large roadmap items are broken down into smaller chunks or projects, where the team will decide how high of a priority those are and how much time will be needed to complete from product, design, and engineering.
Curious to hear other’s thoughts as well!
Dezbor