Prioritization

My article “How to Prioritize: Top 6 Prioritization Techniques” is the most popular on the Secret Product Manager Handbook website. I wrote it a while ago, and although I’ve updated it a bit over time, I thought I might take another pass at the topic.

Clearly prioritization continues to be one of the most important problems for product managers.

Links

* How To Measure Anything, by Douglas W. Hubbard* Teresa Torres’ Product Talk website with lots of information, training, and guidance about customer discovery* I have many podcasts, articles, and videos on storytelling: “The Two Stories Every Product Manager Must Be Able To Tell” (podcast episode), Turn A Good Story Into A Great Story In An Hour (video), Three Simple Steps To Make Your Customer Stories 10x Better (article).* My YouTube channel – visit for lots of archived videos, and my weekly live stream.* The Secret Product Manager Handbook, my guide to product management. One reviewer said “I really think your book was incredibly valuable. Much easier to use than [another well-known product management book].”

The Takeaways

Here are top takeaways from the podcast episode:

* Prioritization is driven – or should be – by our desire to create value in the market, faster. And “value” means a better solution to a problem that a market has an urgent need and budget to solve.* Don’t be afraid of using your intuition about what is valuable and feasible.* Being decisive also means being able to defend your decisions, and that means persuasion, and that should make you think about stories – the stories of the prospects and customers who will love your solution to their problem.* Use data if you can – but recognize that you’re still predicting the future.* Use your organization’s strategy as a tool for prioritization, if the strategy is really about creating value in the market.* In addition to all the other reasons product management is hard, one of the biggest challenges is that you are predicting the future, all the time.

Comment, Rate, Share

Please consider sharing this episode and the podcast with other product managers or interested people. You can click the Like button on the episode, or leave a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, to help other folks discover the episode and the podcast.

Leave me a comment below letting me know what you think of this way of thinking about prioritization.

My article “How to Prioritize: Top 6 Prioritization Techniques” is the most popular on the Secret Product Manager Handbook website. I wrote it a while ago, and although I’ve updated it a bit over time, I thought I might take another pass at the topic.

Clearly prioritization continues to be one of the most important problems for product managers.