What do you do when everyone wants everything everywhere all at once? How do you decide what enhancements and even bugs (since not all are deal breakers) to focus on and in what sequence? Feature prioritization is a key activity in Product Management. But when the topic of prioritization comes up, many people don’t actually understand what it is, or they use techniques and frameworks that, while well-intentioned, are of little actual value. This talk digs into the topic of prioritization, debunks some common misconceptions, and provides a socialization and decision framework that involves key stakeholders in helping you determine what gets implemented when, all with an eye toward balancing business needs with customer and market needs. We will cover what feature prioritization is, why we need to prioritize, how to avoid feature “Prioritization Theatre”, as well as what criteria, techniques, and methods to use in order to maximize benefits for the company, product(s), markets, and customers.
About the Speaker:
Saeed has more than 25 years of experience in product management, working for both startups and public companies, in roles ranging from individual contributor to vice president of product management, for Canadian and US-based companies including Informatica, uptime software, Novell, Avokia, General Magic, Platespin, and Intelliseek.
He co-founded ProductCamp Toronto, founded the Product Leaders Meetup (which is a gathering for senior product directors/VPs), founded the influential blog On Product Management, and contributed numerous articles to the Pragmatic Institute. Saeed earned his B. Sc., Physics from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.
Currently, Saeed runs Transformation Labs, a consulting and advisory firm helping companies in the areas of strategy, roadmapping, launch, and discovery. Saeed provides consulting, mentoring, and workshops to help companies build better products and better product organizations. Connect with him at www.linkedin.com/in/saeedwkhan