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Prioritization methods | When to use which?

Lost in the Jungle of Prioritization Methods?

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the multitude of ideas and tasks competing for your attention in product development? You are not alone. Product Prioritization is an essential skill for product managers, and choosing the right method can make the difference between success and failure.


This guide will give you a broad understanding of different prioritization methods – and, more importantly, when to use them. We explore methods for different stages of product development, from brainstorming new product ideas to planning releases and beyond.

Get ready to find your way through the prioritization jungle and take your product development process to the next level!


This blog post gives you:

  • An high level overview of prioritization methods in product development

  • Understanding when to use which methods at which stage (product discovery vs. product delivery)

  • Comprehensive guide into the first method called RICE incl. a downloadable template)


Understanding the corner parts of Product Development

Before elaborating on the different prioritization techniques, it will be necessary to first learn about the product development process. Knowing when prioritization is required and what to prioritize, forms a very sound foundation in making effective decisions. The process may then be grouped into two major parts: product discovery and product delivery.

Product Discovery

Product discovery is the very first stage of a product development process whereby you come up with, validate, and refine new product ideas. This step is important since it sets the stage for everything that will follow. It’s about the exploration of opportunities – how to understand user needs and recognize market opportunities. You will reduce the potential risk of spending resources on developing products that either do not meet customer needs or find no place in the market.


Key Activities

Ideation and Brainstorming

This is the generation phase, where you generate a large number of ideas that could result in potential products. Freedom of thought and flexibility to express views and collaboration between team members should be fostered in order to capture all kinds of ideas. One could use techniques such as brainstorming sessions, mind mapping, and workshops, which prove really effective. Ideas should be generated about all kinds of possible subjects without considering feasibility or viability at this stage.


First, you will need to validate those ideas with market and user research. It requires an understanding of the needs, preferences, and pain points of your target users. Surveys, interviews, and focus groups are some methods that can provide valuable insights into what the customer wants. Besides, it helps to spot the gaps in the market or find the opportunities by studying the market trends and looking at competitor products. This phase of research assures that the ideas you chase are based on real user needs and market demand.


Assumption Validation

In this phase, you are going to test the assumptions that lie underneath your ideas. Any product idea comes with hypotheses concerning user behavior and market acceptance. It’s paramount to validate those assumptions very early on to avoid really expensive mistakes later. Customer interviews, usability testing, and A/B testing are various techniques which can supply the material needed for supporting or discarding assumptions. Assumption validation helps you zero in on ideas that have a better chance of working.


Designing Prototypes and MVPs

The final step in the product discovery phase is the development of prototypes and minimum viable products. Prototypes are low-fidelity renderings of a product that can be used to test ideas and elicit user feedback. An MVP is a downscaling of a product, containing only the main features. The idea of the MVP is to validate the core idea at a minimal consumption of resources, so that feedback from early customers may be obtained. It’s through such an iterative process of building, testing, and refining that the final product will be very well aligned to the needs of users and the market.


Doing all of these activities and doing them effectively in the product discovery phase is important to lay a strong foundation for your product. It simply means that you have peace of mind while spending your time and resources on the development of completely validated ideas with a better chance of success.


Product Delivery

Product delivery is the stage at which ideas that have undergone validation are brought into being as real products. This would follow into building, implementing, launching, and thereafter continuous product improvement, in tandem with feedback from users. The focus of attention here is execution: ensuring that the product does not merely live up to customer expectations but also performs well in the market.


Key Activities

Feature Development

Development of features involves turning validated ideas into functional product features. This includes prioritization relative to their value for the end-user and the business goals. Development teams work on building such features to ensure that they are robust, user-friendly, and scalable. Iterative development processes, like Agile, can ensure continuous feedback and improvements to affect product change in better serving users’ needs effectively.


Resource Allocation

This becomes necessary because successful delivery of a product calls for distribution amongst its team members, budget, and time towards the achievement of various tasks. In an agile environment whilst working with an agile team the resources are allocated in a long term and stable way.


Technical Implementation

Technical implementation is the actual construction of a product using proper technologies and frameworks. At this stage, the developers, designers, and relevant stakeholders need to collaborate closely to ensure that the product is built according to specification, meeting all standards of performance, security, and scalability. Testing is rigorously conducted to identify and fix bugs in order to ensure reliability for launch.


Post-Launch Improvements

Product launch is the beginning, not the end, of a continuous improvement cycle. The operation shifts into post-launch monitoring of product performance and gathering user feedback. Analytics tools track user behavior, underlining areas that would require improvement. Continuous update and enhancements are made on the basis of this feedback for improving user experience, introduction of new features, and fixing issues. Continuous improvement will ensure that the product stays relevant and competitive in the market place.

Understanding these phases allows you to apply the appropriate prioritization methods at the right time, ensuring maximum efficiency and impact.

What Needs to be Prioritized During Product Development

The different aspects of product development require prioritization at different stages. Here’s an explanation of what has to be prioritized, why it is important, how to approach it, and some practical examples with challenges and tools or techniques that can help.


What to Prioritize in Product Discovery

Ideas and Concepts

During product discovery, ideas and concepts are the first critical elements to work on. At the end, it’s about finding and validating promising ideas for the long term. This phase should trigger loose thinking and open collaboration with churning out an ideal base of ideas from all team members. There are some techniques that really work during this exercise, such as brainstorming sessions, mind mapping, and workshops. In essence, the idea is to come up with a list of ideas without bothering about their feasibility or viability at the very outset.


After developing a list of ideas, they should be rapidly evaluated for their potential impact and feasibility. This is how prioritization methods, such as RICE scoring or Value vs. Effort matrix, will help. Such approaches enable one to filter out very promising ideas that answer the strategic goals best of all and let you and your team focus on the most important ones.


Market and Customer Research

Another important aspect of product discovery is keeping up with market trends and customer feedback. Continual market and customer research will help in keeping your product relevant and competitive. You hear from users directly through surveys, interviews, and focus groups. You can also learn a lot from analyzing the trends in the market and studying competitor products in terms of gaps and opportunities in the market.


This type of work also needs to be prioritized as it will inform your entire product development process by having new insights around your users and customers.


Risks and Assumptions

Another key point to focus on during product discovery is the identification and validation of risks and assumptions. Each product will have an idea with hypotheses concerning user behavior and market acceptance. By testing early, one can avoid the expensive creation of something that won’t be used.


Test high-impact key assumptions, which will be the drivers of success for any product, and make sure that work is focused on high-risk assumptions. Customer interviews, usability tests, and A/B testing are some of the various techniques that provide transparent evidence for or against such assumptions. This thus refines ideas and makes sure development efforts on a product are aimed at feasible solutions.


Prioritizing this kind of work over other aspects will help you in reduce high-risk assumptions that could significantly impact your product.


To Recap Product Discovery:

Prioritization Element

Importance

Approach

Ideas and Concepts

Identifying and validating the most promising ideas is crucial for long-term success.

Use methods that help quickly assess the potential impact and feasibility of ideas.

Market and Customer Research

Staying informed about market trends and customer feedback ensures that your product remains relevant and competitive.

Prioritize ongoing research and integrate findings into your product development process.

Risks and Assumptions

Identifying and validating key assumptions early can prevent costly mistakes later.

Focus on high-risk assumptions that could significantly impact the product’s success.

Product Delivery

In the product delivery phase, you will be building and implementing the product. Proper prioritization – first of all with respect to the core features, and enhancements afterwards – ensures that maximum value will be given to end-users. It requires the development of a feature roadmap and, in turn, the prioritization of features according to user feedback and strategic importance.


Features and Enhancements

In this phase, it is important to balance user needs with business goals and technical feasibility. Techniques such as MoSCoW or User Story Mapping can help make meaningful decisions regarding what features should be developed first.


Technical Debt

Product delivery also includes addressing technical debt. Essentially, technical debt can be described as the implied cost of additional rework arising from easy solutions now rather than considering a better approach that would take longer. Therefore, code should be sustainable and scalable for the long run of the product.


This will help manage technical debt by balancing new feature development against regular refactoring and improvement of code. Scheduling regular code reviews and time for technical debt within development ensures it is handled in a systematic way.


The greatest challenges are justifying time spent on non-visible improvements and managing technical debt without slowing down new development. At some point due to the criticality of work there will be some shortcuts taken, however in the majority of cases technical debt should be eliminated when working on new feature.


Post-Launch Improvements

A product launch marks the beginning, not the end, of a continuous process of improvements. Attention turns to the performance monitoring of the product and the gathering of user feedback upon the release. This eventually works on the fundamental principle that keeps improving the product based on user feedback and performance metrics.


The core activities in this phase are monitoring user analytics, gathering post-launch feedback, and scheduling regular updates. With prioritizing features and fixes that make the maximum impact on user satisfaction and retention, the product shall not be left to slide into a matter of irrelevant competition.


Ensuring the quick handling of important issues, finding a balance between new features and necessary patches, and keeping users engaged are part of the post-launch challenges. Tools that can help in the collection and analysis of user feedback—among them, analytics tools like Google Analytics or Mixpanel, and feedback collection tools like Zendesk or UserVoice—are crucial in gathering and analyzing feedback to provide the right decisions for product improvement.


To Recap Product Delivery:

Balancing between different types of work be it new features, improvements, quick fixes or urgent post launch improvements. There are however some Prioritization Frameworks that can help you with handling these types of work and so prioritize for example based on cost of delay.

Prioritization Element

Importance

Approach

Features and Enhancements

Prioritizing core features and subsequent enhancements ensures that the product delivers value to users.

Use methods that balance user needs with business goals and technical feasibility.

Technical Debt

Addressing technical debt is essential for maintaining a sustainable and scalable codebase.

Integrate refactoring and code improvements into new feature development. This will ensure that you will have a stable codebase on the long run whithout the need to have refactoring initiatives that last multiple months or even years.

Post-Launch Improvements

Continuously improving the product based on user feedback and performance metrics is vital for long-term success.

Prioritize features and fixes that have the most significant impact on user satisfaction and retention.

Prioritization methods for product discovery

In this section we will give you first a short overview around the most useful prioritization methods when in product discovery and then explain one of them in more details!



Product Prioritization Picture
Product Prioritization Picture

Overview


Some of these methods can be used in both product discovery and delivery, however we want to add in here where we think this frameworks are best suited for.

Prioritization Method

Description

Focused on

Helps with

Challenges

RICE

RICE scoring is an extension of ICE where the criteria used are Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. Reach will estimate how many customers or users an idea is likely to affect. The impact measures the degree of benefit.

Product Discovery

– Ensures a comprehensive review of potential ideas.



– Identifies high-impact, wide-reaching ideas that can significantly improve user satisfaction and business outcomes.



– Particularly beneficial for larger teams or more mature products where a full understanding of the scope of impact is crucial.



– Fosters collaboration and transparency by encouraging diverse inputs and clearly specifying the reasoning behind each score.



– Balances short-term and long-term goals by evaluating ideas across multiple dimensions..

– Estimating Reach may be less accurate for new products or markets with little historical data.



– Balancing multiple criteria can be tough since each must be weighed against the others, often involving trade-offs.



– Requires considerable time, especially for teams dealing with large lists of ideas that need evaluation.



– Subjective biases can still interfere with scoring, particularly for Impact and Confidence.

Value vs. Effort Matrix

The Value vs. Effort Matrix is a simple visual prioritization technique to plot ideas or tasks on a 2×2 grid based on how much value an idea has and how difficult it is to implement that idea.


The matrix consists of the following four quadrants:


quick wins: ideas that have high value and low effort;


big initiatives: ideas that have high value and high effort;


fill-ins: ideas that have low value and low effort; and


time sinks: ideas that have low value and high effort.



This helps quickly determine which work items are going to bring the most benefit without being ridiculously cumbersome and which items might not be worth pursuing.

Product Discovery

– Helps balance short-term and long-term initiatives, preventing the team from becoming overwhelmed with high-effort initiatives.



– The visual nature of the matrix provides an easily understandable structure, enabling effective communication of priorities across the team.



– Builds a culture of efficiency by highlighting tasks that will bring high returns on investment.



– Particularly useful for agile teams that are quick to embrace changing priorities and make fast decisions.

– Managing a voluminous amount of ideas and ensuring accurate estimations of value and effort can be challenging.



– Subjective bias can interfere with value and effort estimations, leading to inconsistent plotting on the matrix.



– The matrix can oversimplify complex tasks by not considering dependencies or other conditions that may influence prioritization.



– Prone to favoring short-term interests, potentially at the expense of long-term strategic goals.



– Highly dependent on the cultural judgment of team members, which can lead to controversies or conflicts regarding priorities.



– Avoiding misdirected prioritization requires careful and accurate estimation of value and effort, which can be difficult to achieve consistently.

Opportunity Scoring

A way to score ideas against the importance of problems they are trying to solve, and satisfaction with the solutions in place.



This will enable teams to understand the areas on which improvement will be most effective. First the importance of the problem and satisfaction with the current solution are scored.


Afterwards, the opportunity score is calculated with the help of the following formula:


Opportunity Score = Importance x (1 – Satisfaction).



This ensures that high-opportunity areas where the user needs are not adequately met are focused on.

Product Discovery

– Focuses on high-opportunity areas that can make big improvements in user satisfaction, ensuring value addition.



– Fundamentally, this directs resources towards the solving of only the most critical problems, ensuring that solutions have a greater impact and are more user centered.



– Incentivices deeper understanding of the needs and pains points of users and helps in building up a culture of user centricity.



– Helps in the line of work related to the development of the product with strategic business goals in order to align the efforts of the team towards the support of the company’s overall direction.

– Accurate identification of the user’s needs, coupled with the interpretation of feedback, which requires a great deal of research.



– It is pretty resource and effort intensive to gather reliable data on user satisfaction and problem importance.



– Since the scoring criteria might be applied inconsistently to different ideas, there is likely to be some subjectivity in such assessments.



– The approach relies on qualitative data, most of which can be biased and sometimes rather hard to quantify.



– Bringing identified opportunities back to feasibility and alignment with overall product strategy is essential for successful implementation but can be rather complex to manage

Kano Model

The model is based on surveys and user interviews, which help determine how different features influence customer satisfaction.



This approach helps prioritize features based on their impact on customer satisfaction, ensuring a balanced approach to product development that addresses both essential and innovative aspects.

Product Discovery

– Helps teams understand customer satisfaction and prioritize features that can significantly enhance the user experience.



– It ensures that essential features are included in the product, preventing user dissatisfaction due to missing basic functionalities.



– The model highlights features that can delight users and differentiate the product, helping to create a more compelling offering.



– This method encourages a balanced approach to feature development, considering both basic functionality and innovative enhancements.



– It fosters a deeper understanding of user needs and preferences, which can guide strategic decision-making and product planning.

– Balancing basic and innovative features can be challenging, as overemphasizing one category might lead to user dissatisfaction.



– Accurately categorizing features into the correct Kano categories requires thorough user research and analysis. Misclassification can lead to ineffective prioritization.



– Gathering reliable data on user expectations and satisfaction can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, demanding significant effort and resources.



– Ensuring that all team members have a clear understanding of the Kano categories and their implications is crucial for effective prioritization. Misunderstandings can lead to inconsistent application of the model.



– The model might not capture the complexity of certain features, leading to oversimplified prioritization.



– Balancing short-term user needs with long-term strategic goals is a common challenge. High-value, long-term features might be deprioritized in favor of immediate needs, potentially compromising future growth and user satisfaction.

User Story Mapping

User Story Mapping is a visual tool that helps teams outline the user journey and identify dependencies between different features and tasks. It organizes user stories in a way that helps plan releases and ensure cohesive user experiences.

Product Delivery

– Facilitates effective release planning by organizing user stories into a logical sequence.



– Ensures all user journeys are considered, providing a seamless experience.



– Highlights critical tasks and dependencies, ensuring that key features are prioritized.

– Requires careful attention to detail to accurately identify and manage dependencies.



– Can become complex and unwieldy with large projects, making it difficult to maintain clarity.



– Needs careful consideration to balance immediate requirements with long-term strategic goals.

Cost of Delay

Cost of Delay evaluates the financial impact of delaying the implementation of a feature.



This method helps prioritize features that offer the highest immediate value or mitigate the most significant risks.

Product Delivery

– Ensures that features with the highest financial impact are prioritized.



– Provides a financial rationale for accelerating certain features to market.



– Helps balance different features and tasks by quantifying their financial impact.

– Estimating the true cost of delay can be complex and requires detailed financial analysis.



– Needs careful consideration to balance the financial impacts of various features.



– Requires robust financial data and models to inform prioritization decisions effectively.

Buy a Feature

Buy a Feature involves giving stakeholders a budget to “buy” features they prioritize, ensuring that the development aligns with collective stakeholder input and strategic priorities.

Product Delivery

– Actively involves stakeholders in the prioritization process, ensuring their needs are considered.



– Helps align feature development with strategic business goals based on stakeholder input.



– Creates a transparent prioritization process where stakeholders understand how decisions are made.

– Stakeholders must work within a limited budget, which can lead to tough decisions.



– Ensuring all stakeholders have a fair say in the process can be challenging.



– Needs careful management to balance short-term stakeholder desires with long-term strategic goals.

RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort)

The RICE scoring method is a robust tool that can help teams in the objective appraisal of ideas against one another, with parameters set by Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. We will provide here a short step-by-step guide on how to use RICE scoring for effective prioritization of product discovery ideas.

  • Reach: This is the number of customers or users your idea is going to impact within a given period of time. ​

  • Impact: The potential effect your initiative will have on your customer or user. ​Ideally reflected through a quantitative or qualitative goal.​

  • Confidence: The level of certainty you have to the estimates given in Reach, Impact and Effort. In our Toolbox we provide a Template that uses Itmar Gildar confidence meter.

  • Effort: The estimated total amount of time required to finish up with discovering the idea.​


How To RICE

Step 1: Define your product discovery objectives​Before you start prioritizing ideas, be very sure of what your product discovery objectives are. This stage involves setting precise goals and outcomes that you want to realize out of your product discovery process.

Think about:What are the main goals for your product discovery? For example, are you discovering new market opportunities, improving user satisfaction, or increasing revenue?What metrics will you measure for success?Who are your target users, and what are their needs?Example Objective: “Our objective is to identify and validate new features that raise user engagement by 20% in the next quarter.”

Step 2: Gather ideas​Now that your objectives are defined, it’s time to gather a list of potential ideas that meet your strategic goals. Brainstorming, feedback from real users, market research, and competitor analysis are all ways to do this.

Tips on idea gathering:Open up the floor to all individuals in your team for ideasCheck user feedback and pain pointsReview the market trends and competitor featuresFirst, address those ideas that align directly with your strategic goals and objectives

Step 3: Create a RICE Scoring TemplateDesign a clear scoring mechanism that aids in prioritization and streamlining by using a RICE scoring template. It tends to standardize the criteria of judgment, hence consistency in scoring. For you we already created a Downloadable RICE Template!

Key Elements of RICEReach: This requires an estimate of the number of users the idea is going to affect within a given period.Impact: How much impact will the idea have on a scale from 1-10?.Confidence: On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you that the idea will be successful.Effort: Normally measured in person-months, this refers to how much effort will be required to implement the idea.Downloadable RICE Template: We’ve got a downloadable RICE Scoring Template that you can use with your team for your convenience, there we use a bit of a different approach in scoring.

Step 4:  EstimateImplement the RICE template, and estimate the key criteria of each of these ideas. This can be done collaboratively in team meetings or remotely by sharing the template across the team members, seeking individual inputs.#

Estimation Tips:Get inputs from all sorts of diverse team members to have an all-rounded perspective.Draw on historical data and experiences of the past to make informed estimates.Have open discussions and debates that further sharpen estimates.

Step 5:  Calculate RICE Score

After getting all the estimates in, it’s time to generate the RICE score for every idea. To get the RICE scores, apply the following formula:RICE Score = (Reach × Impact × Confidence​) / Effort


Step 6:  Sort your RICE ScoreLastly, sort the ideas in order of their RICE scores, which will prioritize them. This will get you a list with high-scoring ideas on top, where you should focus to get ideas of greatest relative potential impact for the effort required.

Sorting and Prioritizing Tips:Review this ordered list with your team to ensure it aligns with your strategic goals.Note any dependencies or constraints that may impact implementation.Use the ordered list to guide your product discovery and development.

Final Thoughts

Priority techniques might themselves look like a jungle, but still, one needs to know how to play those techniques effectively for developing products. Be it generating new ideas for a product or just planning its next release, the right set of prioritization tools at your fingertips can make all the difference. This guide has managed to shed some light on all these methods of prioritization, thereby letting you learn when to apply which during these different stages of product development.


Done thoughtfully, these methods will ensure your team is working on the most valuable and feasible ideas, ensuring better outcomes and efficient use of resources. But more than that, proper prioritization will align your product with user needs and business goals and create a culture of transparency and collaboration inside your team.


Remember, the real key to prioritization is not only choosing the right method but also understanding the context in which it’s going to be most effective. Keep improving your approach based on feedback and results, and remain flexible to the constantly changing landscape of product development.


Preview of Upcoming Posts

In case you found this overview helpful and want to dive deep into each prioritization framework, we will stay tuned for our next blog post, where we will dive deep into each of the methods. We will be covering all of the practical applications, steps for the methods, and real-world examples to be at your beck and call in mastering each of the frameworks.


Coming Soon: Deep Dive into Prioritization Methods – Opportunity Scoring

Five of the most important product delivery techniques, in-depth guides to User Story Mapping, Cost of Delay, Buy a Feature, and Probabilistic Forecasting, are coming soon. The guides will help you in planning releases, prioritizing high-value features, engaging stakeholders, and working with your team to manage risks.


Keep an eye on our blog for these upcoming posts and more on the craft of mastering product development.


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