Define the Right Strategic Context to Best Prioritize the Products To Build
Eisenhower, MoSCoW, Kano, ICE, RICE! These are not exotic cocktail names but just a handful of the numerous prioritization frameworks that product teams use to decide which features to build!
Despite these methods, my product teams and I have struggled for years to prioritize products and product features into our development pipeline effectively. We had managed to get it right with customer insights, understanding their biggest problems. Also, we truly understood our narrow and broad competition and how we compared. Finally, we had established an “evidence–based” approach that preserved us from executive or sales mandates on what features we should build.
Still, making informed decisions on which product and which features to build often felt like an overwhelming task. We had to synthesize tons of inputs from various sources that kept piling-up every day (customer research, analytics, market data). And then, apply to them the filter of our constraints (times, budgets, and development resources).
Eventually, I realized that any of the frameworks could work and help prioritize, but only if the context had been appropriately set. Here’s more insight on the three principles you need to follow before you even get started with any process to prioritize:
#1 - Be unequivocally clear on your company's vision and mission
Here’s one of my worst memories as a leader: when team members gave me different answers to a deceivingly simple question; “What’s our company’s vision and strategy”?
To align, you first need to understand the overall business vision. The vast majority of companies have vision and mission statements. When adequately articulated, they help better understand why they exist and what the destination is (when and where). Establishing them is the absolute #1 responsibility of executives.
I recently wrote about how they can best do it, so please check my post “How to Define Your Best Business Vision Ever.” Yet, even with the right approach, most companies’ biggest issue is that the vision and mission are not actionable enough for teams to execute. Strong vision and mission statements are rare, but here’s one that stood out for me from Tesla.
Mission: To create the most compelling car company of the 21st century by driving the world’s transition to electric vehicles.
Their mission statement is simple yet effective. The goal is ambitious and transparent (the most compelling car company). The associated strategy is nicely articulated (leading the world’s transition to electric vehicles).
Vision: To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.
The vision brings inspiration (transition the world to sustainable energies) and expands way beyond vehicles. So, be more like Tesla and push back with your senior executives (yes, you can!) if your company’s vision and mission make it hard to translate into action.
#2 - Align your product vision and strategy to the overall company's vision and mission
The next challenge is to translate a 36,000 ft view into sea-level operating actions. Executives can be good at shaping a 5-year horizon vision for the company. Yet middle management needs to translate into a one year or one-quarter set of goals. Only then, will their teams slice things effectively down to the level of two-week sprints that fully align with the overall vision.
The best way for product teams to solve the issue is to continuously do their homework on customer problem discovery. The product team’s first job is to qualify these problems and assess how pervasive, critical, urgent, and “monetizable” their resolution would be. Then, successful product teams focus on discovering solutions that will both delight their customers and align with the business imperatives.
Or as Marty Cagan put it in his excellent book “Empowered”: “…their task is to discover a solution that is valuable, usable, feasible, and viable”.
Product teams have the unique opportunity to synthesize all the qualitative and quantitative inputs from customers and markets. They should leverage these insights to define a good product vision. It articulates the desired product experience that will align with the company’s vision and mission. The product vision aspirational by nature representing what the product teams will want to reach at some point in the future.
From there, the product teams should work collaboratively to establish the product strategy. It should be the framework that connects the company’s business outcomes to the product initiatives. The product strategy helps the product teams keep in mind why they should build specific features or products. The best way to express a product strategy is through a handful of business outcomes (think market share, customer retention, customer ratings). They will act as the North Star for the product plans.
#3 - Then, collaborate as a team to best prioritize
Once you have set all this strategic context, your product prioritization decisions will come easier. It helps you apply powerful filters on both the problems your company is uniquely positioned to solve and the features or products you’ll be able to define. Just keep in mind this is a dynamic process. Much discovery still needs to happen regarding how viable, feasible, valuable, usable your team’s ideas will be.
It’s where the right models will help prioritize. The good and bad news is that there are a lot of them. From the simplistic Eisenhower 2×2 matrix (Important vs. Urgent) to Story Mapping, weighted scorecards, RICE (Reach-Impact-Confidence-Effort), or even MoSCoW (Must-Should-Could-Won’t Haves). The list is long!
I don’t intend to give you an exhaustive list. Still, if you’re interested, you can check that article from Andrew Quan on the UX Collective: “How to Choose Your Product Prioritization Framework.” It gives you a solid overview of the different frameworks available, from the simplest to the most sophisticated and qualitative to quantitative. In my experience, you need to test and see which frameworks adapt to your unique situation and potentially combine some of them to meet your needs. The most critical is to leverage whatever prioritization framework you choose to form rich and active team discussions on what you will build. It’s a unique opportunity for the product team (mostly product management, product design, and product development functions) to make decisions as one team and talk with one voice.
You can do it too!
Building great products that fully align with your company’s vision and mission is tough! It needs a superheavy lifting from the product teams on customer and market insights. It requires executives who dare to challenge the status quo and set inspiring and actionable directions. Still, some companies like Amazon, Netflix, Apple, or even SouthWest, John Deere, keep repeating that success pattern again and again.
You can do it too! Just keep in mind the importance of proper context before you dive in and prioritize. And if you need specific guidance in aligning those stars, The Product Sherpa is here to help. We’ll help build a tailored approach to your particular situation. Drop us a note, or schedule a free exploratory call, and we’ll get started.