There are different frameworks to prioritize the product backlog. How practical is the use of such frameworks? How to manage top management expectations?

Using a clear, published framework that aligns to the organizations broader goals or strategy is important to prioritizing any set of work. Without this, it will be difficult to build confidence with your team that decisions will hold up and they won’t have the context required to make sound decisions in their execution of the tasks they are assigned.   A prioritization framework doesn’t need to be complicated - in fact its often better if its so simple that it can be committed to memory. In man ...Read More

Ultimately, prioritization comes down to a chain of decisions. Regardless of the framework that you use, the question I see folks overlooking a lot is "who is the right person to make this decision". Is that you, the PM? Is that your manager? Or maybe, if the work relates to security vulnerabilities, is that your VP of Engineering? At Atlassian, we use the framework named DACI for all decision making documentation: https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook/plays/daci The great thing about DACI is ...Read More

The most important thing to prioritizing a product roadmap is to deeply understand your company's strategy. How does your leadership think about 1) Goals for the year (revenue, profitability, user retention/satisfaction, ...) and 2) Balancing goals that might contradict each other (revenue growth that might reduce profitability)? You can ask your manager, read up any material that talks about strategy and join all-hands or other forums to bring such questions to the table. Another important elem ...Read More

In managing product backlogs and aligning with both executive expectations and customer needs, I've found a focused approach to be most effective. This involves two main strategies: Ongoing Lightweight Impact Assessment: As new requests and initiatives come in, I evaluate their potential impact on the business. This involves considering how an initiative will enhance the product, benefit customers, and contribute to our business goals. It's similar to using a simplified version of the RICE metho ...Read More

The various frameworks are just guidance to help you think through the various approaches. There is no silver bullet; however, using a single framework helps to make decisions in a clear consistent manner. I don't prescribe a single framework to every squad in my team but when they use one framework they stay consistent unless the team is ready to get more sophisticated. I recommend keeping this simple because the more dimensions to your framework, the more assumptions you are making and the les ...Read More

Hopefully you have a senior/executive management team that believes in data-informed decision making. Data, by the way, is not just quantitative data (e.g. # of customers asking and their ARR) but qualitative counts for a lot, too, especially in B2B. If you don't have such a team, then this is job one, otherwise it doesn't matter what framework you have; prioritization decisions are going to be made by executive team opinion or pontification rather than examination of ideas through that framewor ...Read More