How do you prioritize features when managing mature products and growth initiatives?

Any prioritization exercise needs to start with first having clarity yourself as the Product Manager on the top business goals and related product priorities, and then to communicate those clearly to your teams so everyone is on the same page on features and growth initiatives and their relative priorities.

Also, having a clear framework for managing competing efforts so it doesn't compromise on existing product quality, delivery timelines for new projects, and eng team focus and velocity is extremely important.

In addition, when managing different competing initiatives like features for mature products and separate growth projects, I advocate for separating the two initiatives into separate sub teams. This makes the roles and responsibilities very clear to all parties and avoids confusion and thrashing within the team. It also avoids burdening a team to do multiple things, which leads to loss of focus and lack of clarity on delivery schedules and timelines.

I've found it helpful to craft a ~3-year product strategy that articulates the market and trends, the challenges/opportunities, and the product's path forward with coherent actions to address those challenges. This frames the product's direction and how it will impact the company and customers you serve. 

From there, determine the % allocation of your teams' capacity across investment buckets. Agree with your team on how you'll spend your time across these to achieve your product strategy:

1. Innovation: bold changes to make leaps and bounds towards the customer journey vision. E.g., new features, the overhaul of existing features, and integrations with partners.
2. Iteration: incremental changes to the existing product to deliver additional customer & business value. E.g., conversion funnel optimizations, A/B testing, and minor fixes that provide an incremental lift of a KPI.
3. Operation: The cost of managing a modern SaaS product. E.g., Security/data privacy, performance/uptime, tech debt/upgrades, and bug fixes.

Next, you can consider the opportunities/ideas that may fall into each of these buckets to create a stack rank for each based on the Impact it can have. Again, a simple scoring framework can help, like RICE (detailed below). While prioritizing within each bucket, consider the following:

1. Align with the product vision and goals: Ensure that the features being considered align with the product's long-term vision and goals and that they support growth initiatives. This is often the first filter when prioritizing items. You can take additional steps to determine Impact and Effort if an opportunity is aligned.
2. Evaluate customer needs and feedback: Regularly gather customer feedback and analyze data to understand their needs and priorities. Is this opportunity impactful to these customers by solving a significant problem? How many customers might this opportunity affect?
3. Consider the cost-benefit of each feature: Evaluate the resources and time required to develop and implement each feature and weigh that against the potential benefits. A helpful framework for this is RICE, where R is the Reach (# of customers), I is Impact (degree of Impact on these customers), C is confidence (how much evidence have we gathered to support our assumptions), E is the Effort (how much effort and time might it take to develop this solution?). You take R*I*C divided by E to provide a numerical score.
4. Balance short-term and long-term benefits: Consider the Impact of each feature on both immediate and future product success.
5. Collaborate with cross-functional teams: Work closely with design, engineering, and marketing teams to ensure that all relevant perspectives are taken into account when making decisions.