Prioritization
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Technical Debt 101: A Product Manager’s Guide to Managing Tech Debt
Managing tech debt is an important concept in product development. Technical debt refers to the implied cost of deficiencies and imperfections in a codebase or system architecture. Just like financial debt, technical debt accrues interest payments in the form of reduced productivity and increased costs over time as a product evolves. Managing technical debt is Continue reading
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How to Balance Short-Term Execution With Long-Term Product Vision
Having clearly defined short-term goals is crucial for any product team to demonstrate progress and deliver value to customers. However, an excessive focus on short-term goals can be dangerous if not balanced with a bigger-picture vision of where you want your product to ultimately get to. The most successful product leaders can effectively blend short-term Continue reading
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Balancing Technical Debt Prioritization With New Feature Development
Technical debt refers to the implied costs and risks of shortcuts taken early in product development that make it more difficult to add features efficiently later on. When engineering teams take actions like copying and pasting code or postponing needed refactoring in order to hit an aggressive launch timeline, it speeds up short-term delivery but Continue reading
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Prioritize Your Product Backlog Using Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)
Having a prioritized product backlog is critical for agile teams to deliver maximum value. But with a laundry list of features, enhancements, bugs, and other items, how do you logically rank what should get worked on first? This is where the Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) framework comes in handy. WSJF provides a formula to Continue reading
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RICE Scoring: A Data-Driven Approach to Product Roadmap Prioritization
Product managers today have a challenging task – choosing which features and initiatives to prioritize on their roadmaps from amongst a multitude of ideas. With development resources limited, not everything can make it onto the next release. Some system of prioritization is essential to identify the projects that will deliver the most value to customers Continue reading
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Quick Introduction to Kanban Boards for Agile Development
For Agile software teams, effective collaboration and communication are essential to delivering working software iteratively. Tracking the status of user stories and development tasks can become challenging as complexity increases across sprints. Kanban boards for Agile Development have become a popular visual system for managing work item workflows and providing transparency into team progress. In Continue reading
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The Action Prioritization Matrix: A Product Manager’s Guide to Effort vs Impact
The Action Prioritization Matrix is an incredibly useful yet often overlooked framework for product managers to evaluate and sequence their initiatives. By mapping potential actions on a simple 2×2 grid based on estimated effort and impact, the matrix helps managers quickly visualize key tradeoffs and make smart strategic decisions on where to focus their limited Continue reading
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Prioritize Your Product Backlog Using the MoSCoW Framework
As discussed in the two previous posts on prioritization frameworks (post 1, post 2), prioritizing the product backlog is one of the most important, and challenging, responsibilities for any Product Manager. With long lists of features, enhancements, bugs and other tasks, determining what to build first can be difficult. This is where the MoSCoW framework Continue reading
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The Essential Guide to Product Backlog Management
In this comprehensive guide to product backlog management, we’ll explore what a product backlog is, why it’s important, and how to effectively manage it throughout the product lifecycle. The product backlog is one of the most important artifacts in agile product development. As the single source of requirements for the product, the backlog contains the Continue reading
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Prioritization Frameworks Part II: Jobs to be Done Prioritization
In this post, the second in the series, and as a follow-on to the recently posted Jobs-to-be-Done Canvas Explained Step-by-Step (please read that one first), we’ll explore how applying a Jobs-to-be-Done prioritization lens to your backlog can help you identify and elevate the items that will drive the most meaningful impact for your customers. Using Continue reading
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Prioritization Frameworks Part I: The ICE Framework
Product backlogs are filled with features, bugs, enhancements, and other items that all compete for development attention and resources. With so many options on the table, how do product managers know what to prioritize and work on next? This is where prioritization frameworks come in handy. Prioritization frameworks provide structured, systematic methods to evaluate and Continue reading
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Avoiding Feature Creep: Maintaining Product Focus and User Satisfaction
Feature creep, bloat, or scope creep refers to the gradual expansion of a product’s features or functionality beyond its original scope or purpose. Avoiding feature creep can be a great challenge for Product Managers. It occurs when additional features or requirements are continually added to the product, often without you properly evaluating their impact on Continue reading
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