In partnership with

Mastering

Prioritization
The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers
 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

In this book
• Why does this ebook exist? 3

• Why prioritization will make or break your product 5

• Why insights are essential and how to source them 6

• How to select the right prioritization framework for your product 12

• The 7 most popular prioritization frameworks and how to use them -

1- Weighted Scoring 18

2- Value vs. Effort 25

3- RICE 30

4- Kano Model 37

5- Story Mapping 44

6- MoSCoW 48

7- Priority poker 52

• Roadmaps: the (visual) result of your prioritization process 57

• Conclusion 60

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Malte Scholz, Co-Founder of airfocus

“At airfocus, our goal is to help teams identify and visualize their

priorities and give everyone a clear overview of what is important

and what is not”

airfocus is a product strategy and roadmapping platform that enables product managers to

identify what is most important and build outstanding products.

It offers a powerful yet easy-to-use prioritization system to help you make the right product

decisions. You can visualize your priorities on a chart as well as drag’n drop beautiful &

presentation-ready roadmaps in minutes. airfocus integrates with your existing workflows

and tools like Jira, Trello, Azure DevOps and Asana to get you started instantly.

airfocus originated from utter frustration with broken decision-making processes in most of

the companies around the world. This often translates to a reliance on messy spreadsheets

that are tough to update and gut decisions which more often than not, prove to be

ineffective and time-consuming.

At airfocus, we are passionate about products, and we believe that every team can bring

the right ideas to life effortlessly.

Sign up for our free 14 day trial and start making more objective,smarter decisions for your

product!

One of the first things we teach aspiring Product Managers is how and

when to say the word 'No.' As new PMs soon realize, saying 'No"

judiciously is a big part of the job. Learning a prioritization process will

help PMs at all stages gain the courage of their convictions. It starts by
Carlos Gonzalez

de Villaumbrosia, saying 'Yes' to this book!

CEO at Product School

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Why does this ebook exist?

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to

focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no

to the hundred other good ideas.”

— Steve Jobs, Apple

Prioritization is what keeps most of our Another reason why product management

product management community up at is not for the faint hearted is because

night. Ultimately, our aim is to create decisions always involve a certain level of

successful products by answering two uncertainty, no matter how much great

seemingly simple questions: what to build feedback and information you gather.

and when? Kodak knew about the risks of digital

photography; they created the first digital

The stakes are always high and, if you
camera (and then decided to stick to film).
prioritize poorly, your business will sink

faster than the Titanic, just as we saw with Market disruption and the risk of new

Kodak and Blockbuster. entrants creating a feature that will make

yours obsolete are all part of the risk and

A lack of good ideas is rarely the issue. You
nature of innovation. This means that
might even have a team with extensive
prioritization isn’t a goal, it’s a continuous
expertise, but how do you decide which of
process.
these ideas is worthy of making it onto the

roadmap? Ideas that aren’t on the roadmap That is why prioritization should be the

end up nowhere. And choosing the wrong highest priority for product managers

ideas will lead you in the same direction. everywhere. A good prioritization framework

and decision making process sets a clear

To add insult to injury, you’ll never have
route towards your goals, easily spotting
enough resources for the avalanche of great
and steering clear of any icebergs in the
ideas that are coming your way. What
distance.
features should you add next? Which bugs

should you fix first? How should you get all

your stakeholders on board? Make the

wrong decisions and your ship will start

taking on water rapidly.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

airfocus is fully committed to making prioritization simple and enabling

better decision making. That’s why we have created this guide.

This actionable guide will help you jump through the hoops of

prioritization. It will teach you the best strategies to uncover the

insights and feedback you actually should be listening to among the

noise. We’ll guide you to reduce uncertainty as much as possible, and

learn how to put the right prioritization framework in place to make

fully-informed decisions that have an impact on your bottom line.

Enjoy 🎉 - The airfocus team

4
PA R T 1 PRIORITIZATION PROCESS VS GUT-

FEELING DECISIONS

Why
One thing is for sure: making decisions
Prioritization Will based on gut feeling and subjective

Make Or Break preferences (or misinterpreted KPIs) from

other managers will definitely not help you

Your Product build a product that delights your users, nor

will it overfill your company’s bank account.

There is a clear pattern to be followed in

order to build a powerful prioritization

process. It always includes and iterates on

How do we know we are building the four pillars, which we will cover extensively.

right product?

The four pillars are: Managing feedback,

This is the Goliath of all questions in the
defining a prioritization framework,
eyes of product managers. It stems from
executing prioritization (“what to build”) and
an inability to utilize the myriad of
building a roadmap (“when to build it”).
available data points effectively. Without

the ability to pick out useful insights from

After reading this book, you’ll have gained a

the noise, it’s almost impossible to create

full understanding of all of them, you’ll be

an effective roadmap that leads to

able to build products your users actually

market fit, while aligning with your

want and are willing to pay for.

company goals.

Manage

Feedback

Build Define

Roadmap Prioritization

Framework

Execute

Prioritization

5
 Reality check
PA R T 2

How much time, money and energy have

Why Insights Are you lost building features without a validated

Essential And How market-fit?

To Source Them Sourcing useful and quantifiable insights

can be very time-consuming. Often this

makes gathering reliable feedback from

stakeholders seem like a never-ending

struggle.

Why?

49% of product managers

Managers outside of your product team
claim that setting roadmap
often worry about their ideas making it to
priorities based on market
the top of the list. This is sometimes
feedback is their biggest
exacerbated by bad KPIs, leading to poorly

challenge.
justified reasons as to why their suggestions

Source - Mind The Product are requirements.

Engaging your users for feedback is also

tough due to the constant information

Reliable product prioritization and
overload — remember: they’re being
decision making should start with
constantly bombarded by different
feedback and market insights.
businesses and services. This limits their

Surprisingly, product managers struggle willingness to provide useful feedback about

heavily with making decisions based on their preferences and pain points again and

market feedback. again, as requested by nearly every

company as soon as they hand over their

contact details. Email and in-app message

overkill have worsened this situation.

It’s easy to get caught in the rip-tide of

biased samples and misinformation while

trying to collect and interpret the right data.

Even your analytics tools (e.g Google

Analytics or Amplitude) which provide a

myriad of data can often present information

gaps, making it a hotbed for

misinterpretation.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

So why should you jump through the

hoops?

Quantifiable information helps to validate

ideas. It reduces risk and is absolutely

crucial to make data informed and

objective decisions.

Not investing enough resources in

feedback and market intelligence, and

doing a bad job at screening the needs of

your users (as is the case with most

companies), leaves you at the mercy of

better products by companies who have a

good understanding of their users.

The good news:

Managing your channels of feedback can

be easy if you do it correctly. Putting a

centralized idea management system in

place will enable your team to have a

reliable source of ideas and proof-points by

collecting them in one place to review and

analyze. And the right prioritization

framework (see chapters 3 and 4) will help

you decide if an idea is roadmap worthy.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Sources of feedback and insights

turning problems into opportunities

We identified and reviewed 6 key channels that provide invaluable market insights and

enable you to make data informed and objective prioritization decisions:

Internal External

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

INTERNAL SOURCES

Customer feedback App & website analytics

No one knows what your product needs The voice of your current users is

better than your users do, so they are the indispensable when it comes to

best place to start gathering your data. understanding if your product meets — or

will meet — your target user needs; but so is

These are our suggestions:
their behavior. Where voice represents

• Website polls opinion, behavior (in many instances)

represents facts. Having access to real-time

If you have a high-traffic website, you can

behavioral user data on your product or

use polls to get direct insights into your

similar ones in the market provides you with

client needs.
insights on which ideas are of value.

• Email lists

These are great when you have an

established customer base.

• Google Marketing Platform’s consumer

surveys

Cost efficient (~ € 0.10 /Response), an

efficient way to get feedback from your

target audience with faster turnaround than

traditional market research.

• Testing product on users

• Social networks

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Sales: a double edged sword Customer success and support

Your sales team is constantly in touch with Just like sales, your customer support team

your users. This makes them a great is always in touch with your users, but they

resource for user feedback. They are in have something sales doesn’t: exact insight

constant contact with the user, listening to into what’s troubling your current user.

their needs, often spotting trends about

User issues can be easily grouped into
requested features, as well as hearing their
categories and measured in order to decide
pain points.
on what to improve. Your categories should

Keep in mind that sales is typically the start with broad areas such as functionality

loudest voice in the room, highly affected or performance and then narrow down to

by short term gains as well as motivated to specific focus points.

close deals with large accounts. Listen to

As with feedback from sales (or indeed any
their feedback, but make sure any feature
other type of feedback), it should be
requests will provide value to the majority
backlogged, quantified, and analyzed.
of customers.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

EXTERNAL RESOURCES

Industry reports Competition

Industry reports, research and analyses by Let’s get one thing out of the way — looking

advisory firms such as Gartner or Nielsen at what competitors are doing doesn’t

provide great insights into your industry and mean comparing your product to theirs, but

help gain insights into what products work, sometimes it helps to look outside. Your

which don’t and for which target customers. product should seek to have a unique and

The downsides of obtaining this data are instantly identifiable selling proposition and

often the lack of flexibility and the high cost, prove its value. With that said, you can

depending on the report and service. source valuable intelligence from your

competitors. You should get acquainted

with what users like about their products,

what they don’t like, and features they wish

were offered by them.

11
PA R T 3 Let’s expand on these benefits

• A framework creates clarity to decide

How To Select The
what to build next for your team by

Right Prioritization replacing subjective guesswork with highly

informed product decisions based on smart

Framework For Your scorings.

Product • It will allow you to see the big picture and

set the right priorities.

• You’ll be able to focus on the right things

by visualizing the importance of each

initiative and feature. Ultimately this will help

Long gone are the days of gut-feeling you to make high impact prioritization and

and messy prioritization spreadsheets. tradeoff decisions.

The most impactful way of approaching

the decision-making process is to have a In turn, this will create confidence in the

defined framework in place. This will decisions the team is making and will foster

enable prioritization to become a a data-driven process, rather than one that’s

standardized process, and will yield the plagued by emotional, time consuming

most impactful decisions for your meetings that become hard to track.

product.

Putting a framework in place will

empower your product team to filter out

data points or requests that aren’t of

significant value or are simply gut-based,

leading to objective decision-making.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

There’s no wrong

prioritization framework.
but there are wrong applications.

The following parameters will determine which framework should work best for you:

1 The strategic level of items you are considering

2 The lifecycle stage and complexity of your product

3 The size of your team and company

The company culture and organizational

4 structure, for example, if you have remote teams

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Managing prioritization
from your vision to your features

Prioritization needs to be done from the highest to the lowest level of product management.

“If the team doesn’t agree on the big picture, then they certainly

won’t agree on a single feature.”

Richard Banfield Author of “Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams”

PRODUCT VISION AND STRATEGY

It all starts with the product vision and

strategy, which establishes the overall

direction of where you’re going and what

the product aims to accomplish.The product

strategy will define the main audience,

which of their needs you plan to satisfy and

which pain points to relieve.

This is the point where you or the people

above you start by saying “no” (…a lot). You’ll

need to say “no” to all initiatives and

features that simply do not help to reach

your strategic goals.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

PRODUCT INITIATIVES

A very helpful method for keeping your team focused on what is

truly important is to define high-level product initiatives. These

should link the overarching strategy to lower level product features.

Setting your initiatives starts with breaking down your strategy into

the high-level efforts needed to reach your strategic goals.

Let’s use the following example from the VOOM Video App to

demonstrate what this breakdown might look like in practice. It’s

part of VOOM’s strategy to make their platform enterprise ready

within the next 12 months. So they start the initiative “Enterprise

readiness”.

The following epics and features are part of this initiative:

• Single sign-on (SSO)

• Reportings

• User roles and permissions

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Qualitative or quantitative

prioritization?

A prioritization framework, be qualitative or • Will it yield the highest business value?

quantitative, will provide a set of guidelines

• How can we generate enough buy-in to
to create products that deliver value to both
get to market, and to get teams &
the customer and the business, while
stakeholders onboard?
allocating your limited resources most

efficiently. • What features will we prioritize for the

next release?
For very high-level prioritization, in most

cases a qualitative approach makes sense.

This can be a qualitative framework such as

SO HOW DO YOU KNOW WHICH
story mapping or —as simple as it sounds
PRIORITIZATION FRAMEWORK IS THE
— in some cases brainstorming or
BEST FIT FOR YOUR PRODUCT AND
discussions, and some idea sparring.
COMPANY?

When the high-level decisions have been

made and the strategy is set, it often makes To make it easy for you to find the right

sense to go with a quantitative approach framework for your specific needs, we’ve

using a prioritization framework to prioritize curated a list of the seven best methods,

features and initiatives. used by thousands of product professionals

(see next chapter).

Ultimately it should be a scalable,

repeatable and standardized process to Each method is broken down into useful

resolve what features to work on next and in modules that enable you to understand

what sequence, while answering questions when to use them, with best practices and

like: examples.

• Does it align with our company vision,

strategy and goals?

• How do we get the overall maximum

value out of our limited resources?

• Are we correctly addressing user needs

and delivering value?

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Taking prioritization frameworks

with a grain of salt

We say this because, although prioritization

frameworks shed objective light on the

features and initiatives you’d like to

measure, they are blind to all external

criteria that are not considered within the

framework. This includes things such as

dependencies, the dynamics of the

competitive landscape and budget cuts or

limitations, to list just a few examples.

These limitations should be taken into

account when prioritizing, and could be

reasons to decide to break from the

solutions your framework offers. Though

veering from the framework may sound

unintuitive, it is still essential in providing the

opportunity-cost of making such a decision.

Please note

Prioritization frameworks are

completely blind to all criteria that

are not considered within the

framework

17
PA R T 4

Weighted
The 7 Most

Popular
Scoring

Prioritization
The weighted scoring decision matrix is a
Frameworks And
powerful quantitative technique. It

How To Use Them evaluates a set of choices (such as ideas or

projects, for example) against a set of

criteria you need to take into account.

It also is known as a “weighted decision

matrix model”.

There are two main types of decision

matrix: weighted and unweighted. The

unweighted decision matrix assumes all

criteria have the same importance while

the weighted one applies different weights.

Weighted scoring and its decision matrix

technique is not only widely applicable, but

also one of the best ways to tackle

important and complex decisions.

Please note

This is often referred to as a

“prioritization matrix”, which is an

umbrella term that’s also used to

describe the Value vs Effort model.

This crossover can often be a source

of confusion. But don’t worry, we’ll be

sure to be very clear about what we

are talking about.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

WHEN SHOULD YOU USE A WEIGHTED

SCORING DECISION MATRIX?

The weighted decision matrix is particularly useful, specifically

when you have:

• Many choices (such as different features, projects, and

campaigns).

• Multiple decision criteria to consider (such as strategic fit, costs,

risk, and customer value) with similar or varying levels of

importance.

It’s exceptionally powerful when you have to choose between

multiple promising options and need to consider many criteria, or

when you need to allocate limited resources to multiple options.

By extensively evaluating your choices and quantifying the process,

you’ll be able to greatly reduce (and in many cases remove)

emotion and guesswork from the decision process. This enables

rational and objective decisions every time.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

HOW TO CREATE A WEIGHTED

SCORING DECISION MATRIX?

1. List different choices

Tip
Start by listing all the decision choices as

rows. Don’t forget any relevant choices, Positive criteria usually represent

your current product or business

since these rows will form the foundation of
goals.
your decision matrix.

Using costs and or project hours (or

In another VOOM Video App example they
something similar) is a good starting
are:
point for negative criteria.

• Google calendar integration

• New onboarding

• Slack bot

2. Determine influencing criteria

Brainstorm what criteria will affect those

decisions (this could be things like

strategic fit, revenue increase, costs,

project hours, and risk of failure, for

example). List these criteria as columns.

Sometimes deciding whether to add a

criteria can be a bit of a trade-off

• Having fewer criteria makes the

prioritization process easier and less time

consuming.

• Leaving a criteria out makes your model

completely blind for this type of impact.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

3. Weigh your criteria

Weigh each of these criteria in the columns using a number (the weight) to assess their

importance and impact on your decision. Establish a clear and consistent rating scale for

each one (for example, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 starting from an insignificant to greater impact). This

helps to calculate the relative importance of each criteria.

Business Value Costs Risk

Weights 5 2 3

New onboarding

Google calendar integration

Slack bot

4. Rate each choice for each criteria

Evaluate your different choices against the criteria. While using your defined rating system

(in our case, from 1 through 5), rate each criteria individually. For example, if you think your

mobile app has tremendous business value, give it a 5. Keep in mind: the values for each

choice don’t need to be different. Equal weighting is perfectly acceptable.

For each of these values, you have to make sure that higher values represent more

preferable options. For example, a high ROI should lead to a high Business Value score

because a great ROI is beneficial to your business. On the flipside, high development costs

should result in a low Costs Value because high costs are negative.

Business Value Costs Risk

Weights 5 2 3

New onboarding 5 x 3 = 15 2 x 3 = 6 3 x 4 = 12

Google calendar integration 5 x 5 = 25 2 x 2 = 4 3 x 2 = 6

Slack bot 5 x 1 = 5 2 x 5 = 10 3 x 4 = 12

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

5. Calculate the weighted scores

Multiply each of the choice ratings by their corresponding weight.

Tip

Using a dedicated prioritization tool allows you to combine different data and

measurement scales within the influencing criteria. This could range from ordinal

(1-5), any given amount of money (like $500 USD), or even bin sizes (S, M, L, XL) as

well as scoring directions.

Business Value Costs Risk

Weights 5 2 3

New onboarding 5 x 3 = 15 2 x 3 = 6 3 x 4 = 12

5 x 5 = 25 2 x 2 = 4 3 x 2 = 6
Google calendar integration

5 x 1 = 5 2 x 5 = 10 3 x 4 = 12
Slack bot

Weights

6. Calculate the total scores

Sum up each of the choices and compare the total scores.

Business Value Costs Risk

Weights 5 2 3 Total Score

New onboarding 5 x 3 = 15 2 x 3 = 6 3 x 4 = 12 15 + 6 + 12 = 33

Google calendar integration 5 x 5 = 25 2 x 2 = 4 3 x 2 = 6 25 + 4 + 6 = 35

5 x 3 = 15

Slack bot 5 x 1 = 5 2 x 5 = 10 3 x 4 = 12 5 + 10 + 12 = 27
5 x 3 = 15

Prioritize this option

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

7. Make your decision

In our example, the total score clearly favors developing a mobile app, so this is the option

that we’ll prioritize.

3 PRO TIPS BEFORE YOU GET STARTED

Now you know how to get started with a weighted decision matrix. Before you go ahead,

check out these three essential tips to avoid common pitfalls:

1 Bang for your buck perspective

Before you start creating your weighted decision matrix, identify what sort of criteria you

think a winning choice requires. Does it need to meet a minimum amount of attributes?

Does it need to align with a certain goal? By doing this, you will quickly eliminate

unnecessary options. Removing all unnecessary items and criteria is a step towards simpler

prioritization. Ultimately, this saves time and yields better results.

2 Rate each criteria separately

When it comes to considering each criteria, be sure to isolate it from all other criteria on the

list. This will help you make an objective decision, putting this one criteria into perspective.

You’ll also be able to make a more unbiased score without being influenced by other factors.

3 Keep the decision matrix up to date

External realities (like a new competitor, for example), as well as internal goals and

considerations (such as budget cuts), can change quickly. So, watch out for any new

factors and update your decision matrix accordingly.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Why we love it A few downsides

It creates transparency and

Could be subject to inherent bias
agreement about the importance
Criteria weight can be under or
of each prioritization factor in the
overestimated based on other
decision making process.
criteria.

It’s one of the most

Blind to externalities
comprehensive methods of
Doesn’t consider changing internal
comparing numerous initiatives
and external factors (new entrants).
thanks to its linear layout.

Dependencies are not considered

It vastly reduces emotional bias,
This can be problematic as
as it is based on objective metrics
dependencies are an important
that affect the viability of the
consideration when prioritizing.
feature in question.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Value vs. Effort

WHAT IS THE VALUE VS. EFFORT WHEN AND WHY SHOULD YOU USE

FRAMEWORK? THE VALUE VS. EFFORT FRAMEWORK?

Value vs. Effort allows teams to assess their Due to its flexibility, intuitive

initiatives based on how much value they implementation, and objective approach, it

will bring and how difficult they’ll be to can be applied to numerous prioritization

implement. This method has the advantage cases. This is particularly useful when you

of visualization as the team will plot their are timeboxed or have very limited

items in a quadrant to decide how to resources, as well as when your team is

distribute and prioritize initiatives. developing a new product, or if you’d

simply like to remove bias and have a more

In order to be more objective, the
objective approach to initiatives that your
placement of the items could be defined
team might feel strongly about.
quantitatively by a decision matrix (see

weighted scoring).
Oftentimes we reject an initiative and

Your team creates a prioritization matrix assume it’s not worth it because of the

with Business Value as the Y-axis, and Effort effort it entails, or quite the opposite when

as the X-axis. You then break the matrix our team is very keen, but upon shedding

down into four quadrants, as shown in the some light on its business value by plotting

example (next page): high value & low them in the quadrant we might reconsider.

effort; high value & high effort; low value &

low effort; low value & high effort. From this

HOW DOES THE VALUE VS. EFFORT
starting point, your team will be able to plot
FRAMEWORK WORK?
each initiative in the relevant quadrant.

In order to place your items on the chart,

you first need to assess each item you want

to prioritize against the following questions:

Please note

The Value Vs. Effort model is

How much value will the item bring? Both
sometimes called a “prioritization
on a business level, and directly to the user.
matrix”, which is another term for

decision matrix. Don’t get confused.

How much effort is required to build it?

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

IN PRACTICE

Items in the high value & low effort will be

deemed top-priority as these are

considered quick wins. On the other end of

the spectrum, there are the low value & high

effort items, which are likely items to cut as

they are difficult to implement and promise

low business value.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

VALUE EFFORT

While considering value, we must ask How do you measure the effort required?

ourselves: what does value mean for our This question can only really be answered

business? And what does it mean to our on a case by case basis. For most product

user personas? teams this could be as simple as

estimating the total amount of developer

Business value hours a certain initiative will require.

This requires you to estimate how much However, oftentimes it involves a

value particular initiatives can yield for the combination of other categories, including

company. This value can be determined by risk, among others…

factors such as whether an initiative will

Some of the most common considerations
generate new revenue, increase customer
to score effort are:
lifetime value, acquire new users, retain

existing ones or reduce churn, among • Developer hours

others. Another thing to consider is the

• Overall resource hours needed (man
impact on brand awareness.
days, persons per month)

User value • Overall operational costs

This describes the value each initiative will

• Risks (risk of failure, unanticipated
bring to your user. You should consider
perceived value upon delivery)
their pain points and how far it goes to

reduce them. Is the market demanding this • Costs (internal or buying external goods

feature? Will it improve your users’ and services)

efficiency (or other similar metric)? Will it

• Story points
benefit a large number of users or only a

small group?
Which sub categories you use is up to each

team to determine, depending on their

resources and priorities.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

DETERMINING YOUR PRIORITIES WITH

THE MATRIX
Please note

Instead of placing your items on the

Now that you’ve plotted your initiatives on quadrants manually, you can back

the different quadrants of the matrix, it is your ratings with weighted scoring to

time to decide which to include in your make more objective decisions.

roadmap, and in what order. Then place them on your “map”

This allows you to have a specific

This is how each quadrant will help you
weight for each subcategory
prioritize them:
depending on what’s most important

to your business right now.

By using a dedicated prioritization

tool, this can be done with just a few

clicks.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Why we love it A few downsides

Extremely flexible and intuitive Could be subject to systematic error:

Applicable across any type of usually this is introduced by those

product, organization, and industry estimating how much value or effort

due to value and effort criteria taking each initiative represents. This may

on a range of metrics. result in results being skewed too

high or too low.

Can be done qualitatively or

quantitatively Best for small teams: it’s hard to

implement for teams with large

Resource allocation Enables you to pipelines as well as large teams.

focus on items that will have the

largest impact based on their goals

and effort.

Objective perspective

Having inputs from different

stakeholders or team members

allows us to standardize how we

prioritize different initiatives.

Aligns stakeholders

Reaching a common ground on how

to prioritize our initiatives allows for

stakeholder buy-in.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

RICE

WHAT IS RICE SCORING? WHEN AND WHY SHOULD YOU USE

RICE SCORING?

The RICE scoring model was introduced by

Intercom a few years ago and has been

The RICE scoring model is one of the best
widely adopted and used by product
frameworks if your product team is trying to
managers and product owners to prioritize
work out in which order they should
feature releases and projects.This
prioritize initiatives or features. It is a time-
framework is structured into four key
saving and consistent framework, and its
criteria that form the acronym “RICE”. The
objective scoring can be a great help when
RICE prioritization framework helps avoid
a product team is trying to derive the
bias towards features and projects you
importance of an initiative. When used
personally prefer.
correctly, it allows the team to evaluate

The acronym consists of four criteria which features are crucial and which are

(reach, impact, confidence, effort): not.

R I C E
Reach Impact Confidence Effort

How many users How much will How confident are How much work can

will this feature our users benefit we about our reach one team member

involve? from our feature? and impact scores? do in a month?

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

HOW DOES RICE WORK? A FORMULA

FOR SUCCESS

Reach

Reach represents the number of users or

paying customers that would be directly

affected by this feature during a set time

period.

This could be customers per month, and in

the case of events they could be

transactions per month or actions.

That can mean things like the number of

people that would interact with a certain

feature in a month, or a reduction in churn

over a month following the release of a new

feature.

Examples:

• New onboarding:

This feature will reach an estimated 3000

new users per month

• Google calendar integration:

This feature needs to be activated right

after onboarding. Therefore if 3000 users

finish the onboarding and 80% choose to

turn it on: 3000x0.8 =2400 users per month.

• Slack bot:

Every user who uses this feature every

month will experience the upgrade. The

reach is 1,000 customers per quarter.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Impact The impact scale involves estimation, but

this is much better than gut feeling. Here’s

Impact is defined by the overall an example:

contribution of a certain feature to your

• New onboarding:
product, reflected by the benefit your users

will get from said feature. Depending on

It will have a large impact conversion rate

your use case, it can also mean how much

therefore the impact score is 4.

a feature will increase your conversion rate.

Measuring how much benefit your users • Slack bot:

get from said feature can be hard, so there

It will have a rather low impact on users, so,
are several scales to choose from, with
the impact score is 1.
Intercom’s being a widely adopted

standard • Google calendar integration:

There are numerous ways of determining In terms of impact, it is somewhere in-

impact. Some key questions to consider between. The impact score is 2.

are: will this feature greatly improve our

conversion rates? Will it help retain users?

Does it improve the ease of use

significantly? Perhaps it’ll make users have

an eureka moment and realize this is

exactly what they need.

Impact scales Minimal Low Medium High Massive

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 to 10 rating

Intercom impact 0.25 0.5 1 2 3

Increase in net profit per

Varies by company
customer and year

airfocus T-shirt sizes

0.25 0.5 0.75 1
(S, M, L, XL)

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Confidence Effort

This metric accounts for the confidence This represents the amount of work that is

you have in the estimations you made. required from your team to build a feature or

Sometimes you believe a project could finish a project. Depending on the use case,

have a large impact but simply lack the the value type could be person-months or

data to back your assumptions up. In other project-hours.

words, how confident are you about your

Keep in mind that we make our estimates in
reach and impact scores? How much data
whole numbers and that effort is a negative
do you have to back your scores up?
factor, being the denominator in the

We use a percentage scale for confidence. formula.

Always ask yourself: how extensively can

You can determine effort quite simply by
my data support my estimates? Typically
asking: how much time will a feature require
100% will represent “high confidence”,
from all of our team members?
Medium equals 80%, and Low is 50%

because anything below that would be a Here’s a person-month example:

shot in the dark.

• Slack bot:

Let’s look at our example: It’s a simple project requiring only a few

days of planning, two weeks of design and

• New onboarding:
few days of coding. We’ll give it a score of 2

We have heavily researched users for person-month.

impact, conducting live-tests, and have

• Google calendar integration:
exact numbers for reach, with an effort

estimate from the team. This feature gets a It’ll take a week of planning, 3-4 weeks dev

90% confidence score. team time, and 1-2 weeks of design. We’ll

assign it a score of 5 person-month.

• Google calendar integration:

• New onboarding:
I have data to back the reach and effort, but

I’m still sceptical about the impact. This Planning this project will take several

project gets an 80% confidence score. weeks, with at least 1 month of engineering,

plus extensive design time. Therefore, the

• Slack bot:
effort score will be 6 person-month.

The reach and impact may be rather

ambiguous, and the effort may be our most

accurate criterion. This project gets a 50%

confidence score.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Calculating RICE score

Implementing a RICE score should be easy The beauty of this is that this formula gives

to calculate with your team. Once you’ve your team a standardized final number that

determined your scores, you can plug them will help you rank your initiatives and can

into a formula to get a final score, and be applied across all sorts of them. This will

compare your projects. allow you to determine which one you’ll

want to work on first and which should

Here’s the formula
come next.

Reach Impact Confidence

RICE
Score
Effort

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THE SCORE?

So, you’ve got your scores and now you

know which initiatives to prioritize first based Don’t forget

on those that scored the highest. This will

There are externalities or criteria that
help you back your decisions with
RICE fails to consider that might

information and data and defend these

influence what you work on first,

decisions to other stakeholders. such as dependencies, available

resources of key-personnel, or
Your RICE scores are best visualized on a
perhaps you simply feel like working
Value vs. Effort chart. It will provide a quick
on a project first due to other

overview of your best projects, low value

externalities. But RICE will allow you

items you should cut, quick wins and to see the trade-offs of making such

valuable but time consuming projects so decisions.

that you can assess them against each other.

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Why we love it A few downsides

Bang for your buck perspective Lack of accuracy

It allows teams to determine how Sometimes evaluating the reach or

much their effort is worth relative to future impact of a project can be

their overall value. Which is exactly difficult.

what we would like to maximize.

Dependencies are not taken into

Paints a big comprehensive picture account

Criteria is based on factors that have This fails to consider that a low

the biggest impact on the product scored product could take

and user through alignment of vision precedence over a high priority one.

and initiatives.

Blind to criteria that are not

Compatible visualization considered

As it can be plotted on a value vs

effort chart for quick visualization

and decision making.

Reduced impact of bias

Due to quantification and

confidence on how much data

backs our factors.

Based mostly on metrics

As the product progresses through

its lifecycle we can continue making

further improvements.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Kano Model

WHAT IS THE KANO MODEL? HOW DOES IT WORK?

The Kano model is a framework used to Here’s where things get interesting; to

prioritize features on the roadmap based on identify how satisfied or even delighted

how likely they will satisfy or delight users. users will be with a product, we have to

Your team should pull together a list of consider the two dimensions (or plotted

features to be considered, and plot them on axes), satisfaction versus functionality. How

a chart that visualizes satisfaction versus will users react to the level of functionality

functionality. It points towards how desired of our features?

or needed a feature can be, or if users are

simply indifferent to it.

Please note

WHEN AND WHY SHOULD YOU USE This doesn’t always work as a linear

THE KANO MODEL? scale, as you’ll come to learn in the

following section, and it’s impossible

to always stay at the top of the scale.

Whenever your team is considering the list

of features to work on for your next release,

and would like to figure out what mix is the

best. This will also result in the best

allocation of limited resources and time.

Kano allows you to work out the right

combination of:

• Minimum basic features that must be

included

• Performance features to start working or

investing in

• Which delight features will impress users

the most

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Satisfaction (Y-axis): Implementation (X-axis)

The vertical axis measures Also called investment or sophistication by

the level of satisfaction, some, this represents how well we’ve

and it ranges from implemented a certain feature, how much

frustration (or complete has been invested in its development, or

dissatisfaction), to delight how much of a particular feature the user

(or complete satisfaction). gets. It ranges from None to Best (or Very

Well Done).

The four feature buckets

Satisfaction

Performance

Delighters

Product/service

performance
Must be’s

Time

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

THE FOUR “FEATURE BUCKETS” Attractive features

Looking at the graph we can quickly identify Also known as delighters. These are

and classify the features into four buckets: pleasant surprises that the user isn’t

expecting, but like the name suggests, once

Basic features
introduced they immediately generate

Also known as must-be features. These are excitement. Introducing these features can

expected by your users but they won’t be what differentiates you. Think about the

satisfy them more. Without them, they won’t time Apple introduced Apple Pay from your

even consider your product. For example, Iphone, or the first time you were able to

we expect our email to be able to import or collaborate on Google Docs.

look up contacts, or a messenger app to

These are the kind of features that make
send messages. If they don’t have this or
you go, “Wow!How cool!”, and if plotted on
the feature doesn’t work, users will simply
the graph, it’s easy to see how the slightest
go elsewhere.
increase of functionality will rapidly increase

We expect these features to be there and satisfaction.

work, and therefore we see that as our

product team puts more effort or money

FEATURES CATEGORIES CHANGE
into making them more functional, our

satisfaction grows. Yet it will never reach the

Categories change over time in a dynamic
positive quadrant. Once it reaches its
environment, just like user expectations.Our
maximum potential, the team can stop
users will change their perception on
investing effort into it.
product attributes in the future. What now

seems to be a game-changer to you, might

Performance features (one-dimensional)
become a standard or expected a year from

The more of these we give users, the more now. That’s why Attractive features will

satisfied they’ll be, therefore moving in a eventually transform into Performance and

linear direction. As we increase functionality, Basic features in time.

so does our investment. Examples could be:

What our customers feel about some
storage space on your cloud service, or
product attribute now is not what they’ll feel
faster internet from your provider.
in the future. Attractive features turn into

Indifferent Performance and Must-be features as time

goes by.
Certain features don’t make much of a

difference. The user feels indifferent towards

their presence or absence. Therefore you

should avoid working on these.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

THE QUESTIONNAIRE

Consider this

In order to discover customer insights about In practice, you should also consider

your product’s features, we must deploy a adding an extra question, asking

Kano questionnaire followed by an how important they consider a

evaluation of the different combinations. certain feature to be.

The questionnaire consists of questions This answer allows you to distinguish

which features are most important to

about the feature we’d like to assess, and
users. It’s a tool to differentiate big
the questions are termed functional or
from small features and the impact
dysfunctional forms:
they have on your user’s view on the

• If you have this feature, how do you feel? product.

• If you don’t have the feature, how do you

feel?

The possible answers for these questions

are:

• I like it

• I expect it

• I am neutral

• I can tolerate it

Minimal Low Medium High Massive

Functional

How would you feel if the product had…?

How would you feel if there was more of…?

Dysfunctional

How would you feel if the product did not have…?

How would you feel if there was less of…?

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

EVALUATE AND PLOT

Before we proceed

The beauty of the Kano model is that when

You’ll notice that there are two new

we pair up our functional and dysfunctional

categories in the table -

answers, we uncover how much a feature is Questionable and Reverse.

wanted, needed or if our users are

• Questionable suggests that
indifferent to it.
someone didn’t quite understand the

We use an evaluation table to uncover in questions or feature being

described.
which categories our features fit, by pairing

functional answers with dysfunctional ones

• Reverse suggests that what we

in rows and columns. suggest is the opposite of what the

user wants.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

WHAT TO DO WITH OUR RESULTS? THE FINAL STEP

First you need to fully understand the table Now you know how each pairing is

and what each pairing means in terms of categorized you’ll want to get all your

categories. answers together and organize your data to

see where the features go. The two

Questionable: they are contradictory so
approaches to organizing your data are
you’ll always see them in a diagonal pattern
called discrete and continuous analysis.
across the table.

If you are new to this and don’t have much

Performance features: these are features
time, we recommend using the simpler
that users like having and dislike not having.
approach- discrete.
The more performance features, the better.

The discrete approach gathers all of your

Must-be (basic): Users dislike not having
respondents’ answers from the evaluation
them, and when present they range from
table. You should then count the total
tolerating to expecting them.
responses per category or demographic,

Attractive: Users like having features they and designate a feature’s category based

don’t expect having. The dysfunctional on the most recurrent response. This will

range will therefore go from ‘expect it’, to allow you to also place them on the

‘tolerate it’. quadrant.

Indifferent features: Will always be in the In order to prioritize your results, use the

middle of the table (as in the graph), as following order:

users are always neutral or can tolerate

Must-be , Performance, Attractive
them, in both their functional and
Indifferent.
dysfunctional answers.

You’ll end up with a table like this:

Feature M P A I R Q Total Category

Feature 1 10 4 2 1 - 3 20 M

Feature 2 4 13 1 2 - - 20 P

Feature 3 14 1 4 1 - - 20 M

Feature 4 5 3 10 - 2 - 20 A

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Why we love it A few downsides

It highlights market fit: fully Subject to inherent limitations

customer centric, it allows caused by survey delivery

immediate identification of product

advantages and weaknesses It solely focuses on customer

through its features. opinion: this means it fails to

account for a level of knowledge

It tailors a product to the needs of about the product and individual

current and target users. This allows bias.

for predictions about features and

audiences based on expectations. Prone to delayed time-to-market :

delays are due to surveying, data

collection and processing time.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Story Mapping

WHAT IS STORY MAPPING?

Story mapping is a widely used method of This highlights the importance of

ordering user stories along different differentiating importance in order to

dimensions to provide a big picture of how generate strategic release plans.

they fit within the overall user experience.

The beauty of doing this is that after you’ve
This map arranges the essential steps of
completed your story map, you’ll be able to
the customer journey on the horizontal axis
visualize all the possible ways in which
in a chronological order, guided by how the
your users could interact with your product.
user would perform said tasks in their
This allows you to map the flow of their
interaction with the product.
behavior as they progress from their first

The vertical axis describes criticality or interaction through to their last step of their

necessity, and different user stories are objective with your product.

therefore arranged vertically, top to bottom,

based on importance.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

WHY SHOULD I USE STORY MAPPING? HOW DOES STORY MAPPING WORK?

This type of backlog organization has quite Story mapping could start as simply as

a few advantages when it comes to grabbing a whiteboard and some sticky

prioritization and execution of your product. notes.

Firstly, it is a visual tool that really allows

You should start by outlining the problem
stakeholders, your development team, and
that you are trying to solve with your
clients, to get a full picture of how users are
product: i.e.,how does it help your users?
interacting with the product. This creates
This will allow you to set a starting point to
common ground for those who often get
mapping your customer’s goals. It will also
caught up in their own details. It happens to
allow you to always keep in mind the user
the best of us! This big picture will help
perspective in all interactions.
identify issues or gaps you might have

previously overlooked. The second step is intuitive: trace your

target audience’s activities. You’ll likely have

Secondly, when it comes to prioritization,
more than one buyer persona, and different
this framework provides teams with
audiences expect different outcomes when
valuable insights as to how to release
interacting with your product.
product iterations with increasing

sophistication. By defining these, the team Taking this into consideration, the team will

is empowered to complete and deliver end- be able to create a common understanding

to-end versions more quickly, allowing you of each target audience and their point of

to rapidly validate concepts. view, to then build stories from.

Last but not least; you can apply it to any Said users will engage with your product in

stage of your product life cycle. a similar way, likely with a set or series of

common activities, also known as themes.

For MVPs: it’ll allow you to pinpoint what the
These activities will now create a backbone
minimum functionality should be in order to
for the story map.
test and validate the concept. Being in the

customer’s shoes will prevent you from

overlooking aspects about the user

experience.

Trying to improve your product? This

framework will give you a full overview of

what new features or enhancements could

add value to your user experience, including

the missing functionalities or elements that

your users could benefit from.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

These activities will be the steps of your Once you have the user stories, you’ll have

sequence, and you’ll have to arrange them to prioritize them and that’s when the

with smaller steps under each one. For vertical axis comes in handy. You’ll simply

example, some of your main steps could be arrange them in hierarchical order with the

registering as a new user, or going through most important ones at the top. This can get

the checkout flow when completing a messy when you have numerous types of

purchase. These will create your sequence users, and you’ll therefore want to map

at the very top, and will be broken down into separate scenarios. But the idea is to be

smaller user stories within each one. able to agree on which stories are crucial,

and which are less important when it comes

Here’s where it starts getting more
to delighting your audience.
interesting as now you have your backbone,

so you’ll have to start giving your skeleton

some life! Your user stories will start getting

mapped to your activities and different

scenarios will arise as you walk in the

shoes of the user. For example: How do I get

rid of items in my cart?

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Why we love it A few downsides

Quick and easy to implement

Information can be easily lost:

Crucial for MVPs or products with

as they are mostly built on a physical

limited resources.
board.

Constant value delivery

The whole exercise can be futile: you

It is user centric, thereby providing

may build a story about the wrong

early feedback and allowing room

user goal, meaning your story

for quick decision making.

mapping is rendered useless.

It allows for an outside-in approach

Fails to consider important factors:

This allows you to see the wood from

such as complexity, or dynamic

the trees. The big picture allows

environments. It’s therefore hard to

every stakeholder to think like, and

establish a timelines past 6 months.

act on behalf of, the user.

Cost effective as it does not require

external inputs, and can be executed

in minutes. As simple as using a

whiteboard.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

MoSCoW

WHAT IS THE MOSCOW METHOD?

The MoSCoW method is one of the most popular prioritization techniques to establish what

is most important to clients and stakeholders. By using this method, stakeholders can

better understand the importance of different features in a release. It is extremely quick and

simple to apply as a prioritization solution, classifying features in four different priority

buckets: Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won’t have.

Let’s break them down:

These are the essential features that need to be included into the product.

Mo Must have
Failing to include one would result in a failed release.

They are important requirements but not essential. They are initiatives that

S Should have
are of great importance and add significant value, but are not crucial.

These are nice-to-have initiatives, as they don’t quite affect the core function,

Co Could have
and would have a very small impact if left out.

These are definitely not a priority for the foreseen timeframe, and therefore will

W Won’t have
not be included in this specific release. In other words, they are out of scope.

WHEN AND WHY SHOULD I USE IT?

The MoSCoW model sets your initiatives by order of priority, and can therefore be applied to

any phase of the product life cycle. However, it is most applicable to product launches,

market launches, particularly early stage products and MVPs.

This is a good method to get the whole organization involved in the prioritization process,

which in turn creates a broader set of perspectives by getting different departments involved.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Effort is another reason why you’d want to MUST-HAVE INITIATIVES

apply this method. Using it will enable your

team to quantify the amount of effort The category name doesn’t come as a

allocated to each feature or initiative, surprise as they will be the lifeblood of your

resulting in the right combination of features product or release. These are non-negotiable

per release. features. Without them, your release could

be a guaranteed failure. You should reach an

agreement on how much time and effort you

HOW DOES THE MOSCOW METHOD
spend on your Must-Haves —you should
WORK?

focus on them, but shouldn’t allocate more

than 60% of overall effort.

In order to run the MoSCoW method

smoothly, your product team and

stakeholders need to decide on the

objectives and factors that will be decisive

Ask your team

to the criteria. This will be immediately

• Will this project work without this
followed by reaching a consensus on what
feature?
initiatives or features you’d like to select.

• What happens if we release

Setting these ground rules is of extreme
without it?

importance — in particular how to settle

• What’s the simplest way to

disagreements — as this can become
accomplish this?
serious bottlenecks down the line.

Lastly, define how much effort should be

split between the Must-Haves, Should-

SHOULD HAVE-HAVE INITIATIVES
Haves, and Could-Haves. This typically

varies by team and project, but a rule of

Being just under the Must-Haves in
thumb suggests that you should dedicate
importance, they are still highly important to
about 20% of your total effort to Could-
the product but not crucial. The product will
Haves.
still manage to function without them. On

the other hand, you wouldn’t want to leave

Now your team is ready to sit down and

them out as they generate a significant

discuss your initiatives. Let’s look into them:

amount of value.

To put it into perspective, you should

include them in the release, but you could

schedule them for a future release without

having a negative effect on the current one.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

COULD-HAVE INITIATIVES

These are nice-to-have initiatives, meaning

that they are not necessary. They add to the

product and generate value to the user, but

they are not exactly a core component or

function of your product. There would be no

repercussions if you were to leave them out.

WON’T-HAVE INITIATIVES

These initiatives are still important to take

into account. You should always identify

them as it’ll help the team decide what will

not be included in the scope, thereby

allowing them to prioritize other initiatives.

They prevent you from wasting resources

that your team needs for this release.

Lastly, the subgrouping of these is also

beneficial. Perhaps there are Won’t-Have

initiatives that will not be included within

this scope, but could be included in the

future, and others that simply won’t be

included at all.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

A few downsides
Why we love it

• Gets business-side stakeholders • Often prone to bias from

involved in the feature prioritization managers worried that their

process. initiatives will fall into “should” or

• Powerful and simple way to “could”, which is exacerbated by

prioritize with time boxes. bad KPIs.

• Highly based on the expert • Deciding where your initiatives

opinion of the team, both technical will fall often becomes a never

and business side. ending discussion when team

members have different levels of

familiarity with the product.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Priority Poker

Develop mobile app

S M L XL

User value

WHAT IS PRIORITY POKER?

Priority Poker is an airfocus feature created If you do eventually gather them into a

to prioritize features and initiatives with a meeting, you might risk having endless

group of people in the most collaborative discussions without a constructive

and time-efficient manner. It allows you to conclusion which means delaying

decide which new projects to start, or to development, which is the worst nightmare

estimate efforts among a number of criteria for all product managers and decision

of your choosing. makers.

Priority Poker can be done during a live- Unlike traditional “democratic” methods of

session or in your own time. prioritizing items where we collaboratively

discuss the rating of items one by one, each

To make the best possible product
player rates items based on their own
decisions, product managers often need to
judgement, but just like a game of Poker, no
incorporate stakeholders’ wisdom and
one gets to see the ratings until it’s time to
expertise. However, most of the time, teams
unveil them.
and stakeholders have diverging opinions.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Once the results are in, you can utilize the HOW DOES PRIORITY POKER WORK?

rating average or start a discussion when

estimations differ tremendously. The owner can play the game in two ways:

WHY SHOULD YOU USE PRIORITY 1- Asynchronously: Players do the criteria

POKER? ratings in their own time (for example, the

owner invites players on Monday and asks

Priority Poker can be used in cross-

them to complete the ratings by Friday).

functional teams and can be adapted to

2- In real-time: Players join a live game

various projects. It guarantees alignment

where the owner controls the flow by

while getting selected stakeholders

selecting one item to prioritize at a time

involved in the prioritization process. So if

(owner and players play item by item during

you are looking to save time, and

a live prioritization meeting).

collaborate in a way that includes

everyone’s expertise when it comes to

The game owner can invite an unlimited
prioritizing items, this might be your go-to
number of players. The owner can invite and
tool.
manage players and even set criteria

permissions. Players can join the game on

No matter how large your team might be, or

mobile or desktop.
how many remote stakeholders you have, it

can be done completely remotely in a time-

efficient manner. Priority Poker is very

flexible, you can change the different levels

of priority and even define criteria based on

the teammates’ expertise and involvement

within the project. Here’s a snapshot of

what Priority Poker is perfect for:

• Anything product-related, such as

prioritizing features, initiatives and backlog

items.

• Agile product management or scrum to

execute sprint planning sessions and

estimate efforts.

• Any design-related task such as choosing

personas, user journeys and scenarios.

• Testing phases to prioritize bugs and fixes.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Each player rates the items based on their After flipping the results for an item, you will

own judgement, but no one gets to see the see the ratings and, more importantly,

ratings (other than the owner) until it’s time where the ratings differ. The platform will

to unveil. then suggest a rating average. The group

can then discuss the rating if needed.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Why we love it

• It resolves the logistical hoops of prioritizing in large teams. It ensures

prioritization in a productive and efficient manner, greatly reducing decision-making

time while involving and aligning everyone.

• It allows you to invite experts to your prioritization workflow, be they team

members, customers or other external stakeholders to make the best possible

decisions.

• It enables you to give everyone a say which maximises buy-in from your team.

• It allows you to beat the HiPPO effect and tackles the issue of people influencing

each other, with extroverts typically overshadowing introverts.

• Remote teams are as much part of the conversation as in-house ones.

Learn more about Priority poker here.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

Common prioritization mistakes

and how to avoid them

1) Loudest or highest-paid person gut 4) Losing the overview of dependencies

feeling dictating priorities

Prioritizing an item to complete it early only

The HiPPO (highest paid person’s opinion) works when all preceding cross-team

effect threatens this process. We tend to deliverables have been delivered on time.

default to decisions to please our seniors,

You might be working on the next big item,
but we’re causing more harm than good.
but if other departments fail to deliver their
How do we say no to this overpowering
preliminary work on time, your ambitious
voice?
launch date will be delayed. As your product

Jeff Bezos once said: “Customer feedback grows, so will your dependencies, and

flattens corporate hierarchies”. Your superior keeping track is a crucial part of it.

may not agree with your opinion. But he or

Modern product management tools can
she will have a hard time arguing against
help you out and make it easy to keep track
your priorities when they come from a
of your dependencies in a visual way.
systematic scoring of customer feedback
Visualize all your dependencies and make
and market intelligence.
them a critical player in your prioritization

2) Lack of external (customer) inputs process.

Your team might have rounded up some 5) Striving to be a me-too product

great features for this release, but if they

You can source valuable intelligence from
lack customer validation, how will you know
your competitors, but your product should
they’re desirable?
seek to have a unique selling proposition

Always validate your internal assumptions and prove its value.

with customer feedback and/or other

This is only achieved based on solid
feedback sources and incorporate it into
research and getting to know your clients
your decision process.
and coming up with innovative ideas.

3) Don’t build based on the highest bidder Always strive to set the pace.

You might be tempted to prioritize features

based on a high paying client. But keep in

mind that these should fit your overall

business and user goals.

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PA R T 5

Roadmaps: The The results of your prioritization process,

which is a decision of what to build and

(Visual) Result Of when, are best visualized as a roadmap.

Your Prioritization Your roadmap is the single source of truth to

visualize both the short and long term

Process
direction of your product, as well as all the

steps needed to deliver against your goals.

Being both a strategic and action-based

document, it’ll be one of the most important

tools in your product manager toolkit.

We won’t delve into roadmapping in this

guide, as it is a whole new topic. You’ll find

numerous useful and actionable resources

about roadmapping within our learning

material and tools.

To help you get started, though, we’ve

structured a collection of all the elements

you should know about in order to build a

great roadmap.

Useful links

How To Create an Excellent Product

Roadmap (incl. 15 Actionable

Templates)

What Is a Roadmap? The Ultimate

Guide for Roadmapping in 2020

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

THE TYPICAL ROADMAP Time-based roadmap

These types of roadmaps are primarily

focused on dates, milestones and

Roadmaps only include the most necessary
deadlines. They use time as the main
information. This includes milestones,
mechanism for measuring success, which
responsible teams or people, items,
can be a great method for visualizing how
initiatives, themes, and of course, progress.
your product will progress over time.

Level of detail varies by audience There are hundreds of roadmap templates

out there, and they can also include both

You’ll have to adapt the level of detail
progress and time based combinations.
depending on the audience you are sharing

your roadmap with. Executives and C-level But the bottom line is that when done right,

will need a zoomed out version, as they it will be the tool that ensures that you are

don’t need as many details as your focusing on the right things at the right time.

developers. Likewise, you would include

less detailed timings and descriptions when

presenting a public roadmap (versus an

internal product roadmap).

Depending on your use case or audience

you may decide to opt for one of two

options:

Progress-based roadmap

A progress-based product roadmap divides

the current items into lanes based on the

level of progress, for example as “to-do,” “in

progress,” or “done”. at the right time.

They are commonly used in agile

development, one of the reasons being that

they generally offer users more flexibility

than a time-based roadmap as, instead of

being restricted by dates and deadlines,

tasks are based on progress.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

What tool should you use

to create a roadmap?

A lot of people are still spending hours

transforming their JIRA projects into a

product roadmap using Excel or

Powerpoint. The thing is: your roadmap will

change regularly and you need to be able to

adapt it in minutes, and you need a tool that

will help you do this.

Your product roadmap should also always

look visually slick so that it makes a good

impression when presenting it to colleagues

and management. But it shouldn’t require

you to be a gifted designer to create a

visually appealing roadmap.

The right tools, like airfocus for example, will

take care of that allowing you to

concentrate on the content instead.

Moreover, your audience should always

have access to an up-to-date version (e.g.

via a link) instead of searching for an

outdated Excel file in their inbox.

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PA R T 6 We suggest that you always consider the

following when prioritizing in the future:

Conclusion
• Vision and high-level strategy should

always be the driving force behind

prioritizing items.
Prioritization should be a consistent,

repeatable process. It should be done

• It should start with gathering multiple
collaboratively in order to get everyone
perspectives from different insights
on board.
channels with customer feedback leading

the way.
We cannot stress enough the

importance of alignment and getting a

• Centralizing your feedback and insights
full understanding of the high level
in order to analyze, rate and validate ideas
product strategy. This will ultimately
and hypotheses.
allow you to link your releases to the

greater product goals. • Removing all unnecessary items and

criteria is a step towards easier prioritization

and better results, saving time and focusing

on those that align with our product goals

and users. Your framework of choice should

enable this.

• Pick prioritization methods that best suit

your needs. And be aware that prioritization

frameworks aren’t oracles, but will give your

team an overview of what’s happened

when you decide not to prioritize based on

the results it yields. These should be results

that will align with your product strategy.

• Execute your priorities by building and

sharing informed, priority-based roadmaps

You should now be fully equipped to master

prioritization and figure out what you and

your team should focus on next. And don’t

forget: If you want to discover the easy way

to prioritize while saving plenty of

time:There’s never been a better time to

give airfocus a try.

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 Mastering Prioritization — The Ultimate Guide For Product Managers

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products with

powerful prioritization

and clear roadmaps

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