Where do ideas for new features come from? How do you decide which ones to build?

This is a two-part question. Let me first articulate how I like coming up with ideas for new opportunities, followed by how I like to make decisions about what to build. Hopefully, you don’t mind that I’m thinking about “opportunities” because it might not always be a feature that’s the right solution. I should start by saying that there isn’t one right approach to coming up with ideas. In my experience, I’ve had success ensuring that there are: Insights from the four lenses: Customer, Business, ...Read More

Everywhere! Users themselves, colleagues, market research, competitors, randomly in the shower. Generally, I like to consider each idea seriously and work through a few questions to help decide if they are worth building: What, fundamentally is the problem this idea is meant to solve? How worth it is solving that problem vs. others I know about? Does solving this problem create opportunities or risks in any form that I should think about? Is this a problem I need to solve now, in 6 months, in 2 ...Read More

New ideas can come from various sources: Customer and end User feedback Metrics and usage data. Metrics movers: ideas that will make a dent on you metrics Market research, competitive analysis and trends: Stakeholders such as other teams that are dependent on you Engineering efficiency and improvements Please see my other response on how to decide what to build. Broadly speaking the decision for what to build depends upon: User problems that the features will help resolve Impact: what is the end ...Read More

Ideas can come from many places. They include customer feedback calls, customer troubleshooting sessions, customer submitted ideas (at Splunk, we have an idea submission portal called ideas.splunk.com), conferences (at Splunk, we host .conf where we have the opportunity to meet many customers in person), ideas from your engineering team (they generate some of the best ideas), and ideas you dream up yourself.   Once there’s a list of ideas, we typically do a full re-prioritization at annual plann ...Read More

Prioritise with respect to the key goal that is important to the org -- but balance with your estimation of what you think can land. That sounds simple, but in large matrixed organisations, that can get hard quickly. Sometimes it's not clear what advances the org's goal -- is there a key metric? Can you forecast a project's impact on that metric, and is that forecast credible? If shipping a particular project needs alignment from lots of teams, do all of them share the same incentives you do? If ...Read More

Ideas for new features come from everywhere: Usage data/analytics and insights, design & user research, executive vision or business needs, competitive/industry analysis and trends, engineering/architecture insights, support tickets/community forums, Mktg/PMM, etc. It is a good practice to keenly scan & listen for new feature ideas.  The decision on what (& when) to build, should be based on a simple & structured approach. First, is it a validated user problem or new user value o ...Read More

The easy answer is ideas come from everywhere—customers, sales, internal teams, data, market trends, a founder's morning shower epiphany, etc. In reality, what matters most is having a clear system to prioritize them based on impact, not who yells loudest. I don't think you take an idea and then just go and build it. You need to look at the ideas holistically and in a larger context. Are they hinting at a one-off problem or an endemic one? Use all the noise of the requests to triangulate the cus ...Read More

One thing I've never had an issue on is coming up with features for a product. If you're ever bereft of ideas, simply go and speak to a customer and they'll provide a dozen ways your product can be improved. But it's important to structure the ideas so you don't get overwhelmed. Here's how you can go about doing that: Brainstorm with your partners: Setup time with your partners to generate and refine ideas. You can use customer feedback as an input Vote/prioritize on the top ideas: Give everyone ...Read More

Generating ideas for new features is an ongoing process that draws from various sources. These sources include customer feedback, market research, internal brainstorming, competitive analysis, and emerging trends. By tapping into these channels, we cultivate a pool of potential features that could enhance our product. Deciding which ideas to prioritize involves a thoughtful evaluation process. We consider factors like alignment with our product strategy, the potential value to customers, market ...Read More

It’s a big question, and there’s no single answer but in my career the common thread is immersion. Early in my career at Google, I went through ~600 support tickets and grouped them by theme. That gave me a clear picture of where users were struggling. The biggest issue wasn’t advanced functionality, it was just getting started. That insight led to building a console to simplify onboarding. That was the seed of the idea. At my startup, we started with a much looser hypothesis. We wanted to do so ...Read More

Ideas for new features can come from a multitude of sources, and deciding which ones to build involves a thoughtful process of evaluation and prioritization. Here’s how we approach this at Barracuda: Sources of Feature Ideas Customer Feedback: Direct input from users is invaluable. This can be gathered through support tickets, customer interviews, usability tests, surveys, and feedback forms. Customers often provide insights into what features they need, what issues they encounter, and how their ...Read More

Product team should have the ability to collect idea inputs. Idea generation can come from everywhere including  Customers (both existing and potential)  Internal teams (product development, sales, marketing, customer support, customer success, sales engineering and more)  External entities like industry experts, competitors, technology trends etc The key role for product team is to distill the ideas and decide  What problems to address  Prioritization order Implementation approach (working with ...Read More

New ideas can come from anywhere, but the best ones usually emerge from those who truly understand the challenges within a specific space and are constantly listening to the people experiencing these problems daily. Apart from product managers talking with customers, I've seen great ideas come from engineering, design, sales, and executives. Conferences and user group meetups are also fertile grounds for new ideas. Customer advisory boards are amazing sources of great ideas, as these customers a ...Read More

A single customer conversation will enable you to generate a product roadmap for the next 1 year. While looking at competitors, speaking to thought leaders and industry experts, and prototyping new tech will always have their place, nothing beats speaking to a customer to generate new feature ideas. After all, who better to understand what's missing from your product than the ones who will use it most. Now, it's critical to understand that you should never just build whatever your customers ask ...Read More

New ideas can come from anywhere and I would contend that you want to create an org culture where this is true. Your sales team has daily conversations with prospects and depending on why you win/lose, you may get requests/ideas for new features to win more. Similarly, your CS team has daily conversations with your existing customers and depending on how your customers are using your product, you may get requests/ideas for new features to either drive expansion or reduce churn. Sometimes your pr ...Read More

Ideas for new features come from various sources, including customer feedback, market research, internal brainstorming sessions, competitor analysis, and emerging technologies. To decide which ideas to invest in, product teams evaluate them against business goals, user impact, and technical feasibility. Personally, I find a lot of joy during the ideation phase. The biggest challenge I see teams face is bringing these ideas together into a cohesive narrative that generates virality before the pro ...Read More

As a PMM lead, I usually get feature ideas as a subproduct of my research & daily work. But if extracted, the best ways to discover what we need to build next come from: Reading user feedback through existing surveys, and social listening. Reviewing usability data (heatmaps, user recordings, website feedback tools). Reading sales and CS Slack channels. Feature-related insights often spark there. Checking CS tickets for relevant keywords can help too. Exploring Hubspot deals for customers on ...Read More