Apr 22, 2019

⚡️ Adam's Product Management Newsletter - Issue #2 - Prioritising in Product Management

Adam Wintle

Hi there!

One interesting question I hear quite often is “how do you prioritise things which should be built for the product”. It’s really hard to prioritise when there’s so many opinions and so many techniques for approaching prioritisation.

Based on my experience I have found one of the main reasons teams fail in this area is that they don’t have a clear understanding of what’s truly urgent for their product.

In this issue are some of the best perspectives and opinions, including my own take on this topic.

Prioritize Opportunities, Not Solutions

Teresa Torres outlines a sensible approach, which I personally agree with and incorporate into my own product management method. At the core it’s all about spotting the opportunities by speaking to customer and checking how much each opportunity aligns with an outcome you’re looking to achieve within the product.

www.producttalk.org

Silence the Squeaky Wheel through Feature Prioritization

The key here is to have a prioritisation system in place before you begin getting product ideas from stakeholders, then the prioritisation system can be anything as long as the team respect it and gain support in using it.

www.mindtheproduct.com

Choose your priorities and ruthlessly eliminate the rest

Aytekin brings up a really important principle to remember; decide on what your priorities are (for the week, the sprint, the quarter, or whatever time period) and then completely focus on achieving those, and then say “no” to everything which is requested.

medium.com

Product Planning with OKRs (Objectives & Key Results)

I could probably to an entire issue just about OKRs, but I thought this was a good introduction to the subject. Here Gannon Hall goes into specifics for using OKRs for project planning.

medium.com

Enter The Matrix - Lean Prioritisation

Here Andy clearly articulates the “Value” and “Effort” method, where the value generated for your customers is plotted on a vertical and horizontal axes against the effort required to deliver something. Its a simple yet effective prioritisation technique which I frequently use.

www.mindtheproduct.com

20 Product Prioritization Techniques: A Map and Guided Tour

I’ve been a big fan of Folding Burritos for a while. Here’s their exhaustive list of prioritisation techniques. I haven’t tried them all yet, but the key take away for me is each technique has its own appropriate time of use, team size, industry, etc, so its important to make sure you pick the right technique which is the best fit for your product.

foldingburritos.com

Thank you!

Thank you for signing up and sticking with me through to the second issue! From now on you’ll receive the newsletter (almost) every Monday. I very much hope you’ll enjoy it!

You can also help me shape the future of this newsletter. What product management topics are you curious about? Send me a note by replying to this email.

Thanks again,

– Adam

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Adam Wintle @adamwintle

Focusing on People & Product: the intersection of psychology and product management.

After working in product for over a decade and speaking to many other product mangers (as well as UXers, growth people, marketers and techies) the number one struggle I heard again and again is that people are at the root of the majority of the problems.

Once you have mastered the basics of product management. Once you have read all the books. After you’ve been to all the conferences. You’ve seen all the YouTube videos; you’re a member of all the Slack communities. Then you are only left with learning how to lead, work with and manage other people, to get them all aligned and pointing in the same direction, so you can build your product vision and ultimately build a successful product.

This art of People & Product can take decades to master. I’m certainly not a master of this yet, but I thought you might enjoy following along on my journey. Want in?

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