quantitative, qualitative, and intuitive feature prioritization

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Quantitative, Qualitative, Intuitive Feature Prioritization with Andrew Breen The Product Mentor

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Slides Andrew Breen recently used in his discussion w/ mentees of The Product Mentor. The Product Mentor is a program designed to pair Product Mentors and Mentees from around the World, across all industries, from start-up to enterprise, guided by the fundamental goals…Better Decisions. Better Products. Better Product People. Throughout the program, each mentor leads a conversation in an area of their expertise that is live streamed and available to both mentee and the broader product community. http://TheProductMentor.com

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Page 1: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

Quantitative, Qualitative, Intuitive Feature Prioritizationwith Andrew Breen

The Product Mentor

Page 2: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

Who am I?● 20+ years building tech products across

multiple industries ranging from early stage to large companies

● Particular focus on mobile/communication● Broad experience in the product

development process (Agile)● Recently installed as VP, Product Delivery at

American Express

Page 3: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

What’s your Approach?● Have a philosophy about product dev● Be more of a referee than a player...but don’t

be afraid to have a point of view● Remove the subjectivity: cite quantitative

and/or qualitative facts to avoid opinions● Be transparent getting stakeholders and

product team involved early and intimately so there’s ownership and autonomy

Page 4: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

What does a Product Manager do?As Product Manager, you are the driver for the product development process. You have many stakeholders, inputs and team members depending on your prioritization.

How do we do that using quantitative, qualitative and intuitive feature prioritization?

Page 5: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

What is the Product Triangle?

User/Customer

Business Goals Operational Execution

Your job is to be the advocate for the user balancing that against business goals and operational constraints

Page 6: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

Who are your Users/Customers?

What are your (potential) users telling you behaviorally?

Usage/engagement data, transactions, surveys, focus groups, user testing

Page 7: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

How do you use Engagement Data?● Find site/app metrics that actually show how

people are using your product○ Avoid facade metrics that include non-engaged

users (e.g. pageviews)○ How successful are people with your product?

● Keep it simple: Divide by active users, transactions or other meaningful core metric○ Use funnel metrics to assess flow/drop-off for core

use-cases

Page 8: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

What can be gleaned from surveys?● Used for direction and to measure sentiment● Have a clear objective and avoid bias● Be specific and brief● Limit open ended questions but offer them● Use incentives to attract a wider audience● Don’t overuse surveys or their data

○ Esp if not a statistically significant representation of your audience)

Page 9: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

What about Focus Groups and User Testing?

● Gain detailed sentiment with a focus group of 4-10 (potential) customers○ Group facilitating brainstorming/feedback○ Used as top level inputs; not quantifiable

● User Tests for one-on-one usability feedback○ Test prototypes by asking users to finish tasks○ Do not answer questions, respond with a question○ Do not draw any conclusions until you test it with at

least 5 people looking for patterns

Page 10: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

Who are your Business Goals?

What are your stakeholders telling you is important?

Translating business priorities into actionable tasks

Page 11: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

How do You Form Business Goals?● The KPI (Key Performance Indicators) that the company

measures its business against● True from day 1 to day n of the company● Examples:

○ New user registrations per time period○ Transactions/Revenue per time period○ Minutes engaged with product per session○ New customer funnel completion rate

● All newly proposed features should be measured in how they impact these

Page 12: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

Who are Stakeholders?● Sponsor/expert/key influencer for a feature● For every major feature, be sure to have a

stakeholder (and it can’t be you/your team)○ If you can’t find one, you likely shouldn’t be doing it

● Get stakeholder buy-in at strategic development points: before you begin work and when you believe its ready○ Make them feel like an owner

Page 13: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

Who are Your Execution Concerns?

What is your team telling you impacts developing, releasing and supporting this?

Constraints and risks

Page 14: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

What is involved in realizing this?● Execution team: design, dev, QA, copywriting,

etc who will build it (+25-50% to any LoEs)● What will the impact be on support?● How will customers know about and get it?

What is the messaging and positioning?● Are there partners involved?● Are there any constraints or risks that need to

be better understood?

Page 15: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

How do we use this to form a plan?

What is a roadmap anyway?

Impact, complexity, themes, charts and tasks

Page 16: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

How do we use Impact vs. Complexity?Business impact is measurable improvement of core metrics by the feature

Complex items are ones with many unknowns/high risks

1. Initial Focus 2. Big ticket items

1a. Low-Hanging Fruit X. Avoid

Impa

ct

ComplexityLow

High

High

Page 17: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

What are Themes?● Temporal “soft” priorities that make sure you

focus on what’s impactful and relevant now● Generally quarterly but can have overlap

○ At most, one should be winding down while another is ramping up

● Example:Improve user engagement

Today

Grow customer base

Q2

Better monetize customers

Q3

Expand into new region

Q4

Page 18: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

The Product Chart as Roadmap● More for managing stakeholders than the

product team○ But your team should be aware of what is committed

● Have swimlanes (by theme, product group or customer segment)

● Directional (or time indicative) vs. hard times○ Active, Next, Likely, Probably, Maybe○ Don’t be overly specific boxing yourself in

Page 19: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

Sample Product Chart

Feature 1Improvement X

Feature 2 Feature 8 Feature 14Feature 15Feature 16

Improvement Y Feature 3Feature 4

Feature 9 Feature 17Feature 18Feature 19

Feature 5 Improvement ZFeature 6

Feature 10Feature 11

Feature 20Feature 21

Feature 7 Feature 12Feature 13

Feature 22Feature 23

Active Next Likely Probably Maybe

Lane

1La

ne 2

Lane

3La

ne 4

On TrackBlocked/IssuesOff Track

Page 20: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

Product Team View (Kanban Style)

Improvement Z Feature 2 Feature 1 ... ... ...

Feature 6 Feature 3 Improvement X

Feature 7 Feature 4 Improvement Y

Feature 8 Feature 5

Feature 9

Feature 10

Feature 11

Feature 12

Backlog To Do Doing To Test To Accept To Release

Hig

her P

riorit

y

NOTE: typically bigger features are broken down into stories and then tasks at this level for execution

Page 21: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

Product Case (for new Features)Who is the customer/user? Who is the target for this feature? Are there more than one (e.g. end-user and internal support)?

What problem/need do they have? Focus on the problem/need for the user and/or the opportunity for us.

What are the primary use-cases? Enumerated list kept at a high-level. These will be translated into detailed user stories by the team but these

should be detailed enough to decide what is essential for an MVP (but this list should not define MVP).

What are constraints to consider? Are there boundaries or other limitations (internal or external) to consider when planning this?

How do we go to market? How do we promote this to new/existing customers? How do we raise awareness?

How do we monetize/What are cost considerations? Is this feature monetized separately or as part of an existing offering?

What are the price points and cost aspect?

What is supporting data? What data (quantitative and/or qualitative) do we have to support this feature? If it's new/different enough that we don’t have

easily quantifiable analytics, what are proxies we can use (e.g. customer surveys/focus groups, competitive, etc)?

What are the key results? What are the measurable results we expect to achieve with this project? Make sure they are both concrete and not easily

done just by creating this.

Page 22: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Intuitive Feature Prioritization

And that’s a Wrap...

User engagement + impact on KPI + thematic relevance + execution risk = priority

So what’s the intuitive part?

These best practices, tools, techniques and your good judgement