There are two types of people: those who maintain an out-of-box email policy and those who let their inboxes get out of hand. And while the two of you can argue about the best system, there isn't much of a difference in terms of productivity.
When it comes to product delays, those who don't get input win. Product backlogs are often a dump for every product-related idea, story, feature requirement, fix, and task, and unsurprisingly, they can be quite heavy and difficult to manage if not handled properly.
However, reducing the residue on a product is not as easy as dealing with every item it seems. The processing of different articles takes longer and varies in urgency. Built In spoke to five companies about how they align the items in their product portfolio with the overall business vision and how this helps prioritize levels of importance.
Tips for cleaning up product buildup
- Know what problems you want to solve
- Prioritize projects with the greatest impact
- Enabling the product team to take more ownership of projects and do more
- Limit who can add additions to the outstanding work
- Use the RICE method
Alignable
Phillip McKee
PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER
What setup do you need to ensure to ensure that the Product Backlog is manageable and that your articles really belong to you?
It is important that we prioritize the projects with the greatest impact. Our accumulation system housed in Notion allows us to stay focused and focused on the throat. We have created templates for our task cards that anyone on a team can fill out. The models force the creator to deal with his idea. You research and discuss with the team members so that we can justify and prioritize the work at hand and fill the backlog with ideas ourselves. By tidying up the setup, we have all the information we need to make a call and get started.
We involve stakeholders at every step during our product planning process. ""
How do you prioritize the items that are on your order book?
We review all potential work with stakeholders to decide what we think best fits our business goals. The list of ideas is shortened to the items with the greatest impact and then expanded to what we call "epics." Each epic has its own team of engineers, product managers, and marketers. Because Epics are project and goal-oriented, prioritization is easy with a bi-weekly stand-by meeting with the Epic team.
How do you categorize the items in the order book?
For everything that has nothing to do with the quarterly epics, everyone from all business areas can add tickets to the order book. We take up the ideas that need to be prioritized in a preparatory meeting with stakeholders from the areas of product marketing, product management, customer service and engineering and play a round of prioritization poker. Everyone is armed with a deck of cards and we evaluate the ideas based on their estimated size and impact. Then we first divide the impact score by the size score with the shortest weighted job (WSJF), which leads to a WSJF score and an extremely profitable job stack ranking.
Which stakeholders do you involve in the accumulation prioritization process?
We involve stakeholders at every step during our product planning process. First, at the beginning of each quarter, the entire team is involved in the initiatives the company is focused on. Then we meet with everyone involved to decide how we want to measure and achieve success. These stakeholders typically include the team that will perform the work, members of the management team, and anyone who is affected by the work in progress.
We also ask all team members to provide weekly TL updates. DR (not read too long ago) about what's going on in his forest neck and asks for comments and suggestions.
Beyond finance
Shaila Kuchibhotla
VP PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
Kuchibhotla and his team at Beyond Finance follow the RICE method to prioritize the product jam. In the fintech business, every item on the order book is tied to the business goal, which is later resolved, and then determines its meaning.
What metrics do you need to ensure that product inventory is manageable and that the items actually exist?
As an organization, we have defined a number of key business goals to evaluate what is important. Each feature request or idea that the product team receives is assessed against the prism of the customer experience and how it relates to those business goals.
We've also streamlined our ingestion process so the product team feels more in control of what and when. Stakeholder requests are organized in one place and regularly reviewed by the product team to decide what to add to the backlog.
Throughout the process, it's important that the product team consider the problems we want to solve, or the results we want to get with each change, and how they relate to our business goals.
How do you prioritize the items that are on your order book?
We are working on using the RICE framework for product prioritization.
For each item on the order book, we describe the primary business objective that we believe will have an impact and evaluate the following factors to determine priority.
THE RICE FRAME
- Audience: How many users will the feature affect in a given period of time?
- Impact: How does the role affect users or business goals (e.g., low, medium, high)?
- Trust: How reliable are the estimates of scope and impact? (Is there any data to support these numbers, or is it more intuition?)
- Effort: What level of product, design, and development effort is required for this role (e.g. low, medium, high)?
Which other stakeholders do you involve in the prioritization process and how do they help with decisions about what should be prioritized and when?
We're working with marketing, sales, operations, and law to better understand their needs, the problems they're trying to solve, and the limitations they have. We also have a monthly review of the roadmap with these stakeholders to make our strategy and product priority visible.
These conversations provide an opportunity for our stakeholders to examine how we prioritized things and see if we accurately portrayed things like scope or impact. You can present additional data to show that something has more impact than originally thought and argue that it should be a higher priority.
We also work closely with the technology team to evaluate the feasibility of various features or ideas and to discuss possible solutions to support the product initiative. This helps us to get an accurate estimate of the effort required in setting priorities. Ultimately, the decision on priority is made by the product team in line with business objectives, but the input and feedback from other teams is important and helps us create an effective product roadmap.
Inspirational group
Sam Pourkermani
DIRECTOR FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
To prioritize the product backlog, teams need to share an understanding of the business vision and goals. Within the Inspirant Group "no advice" company , Pourkermani said that the company's vision is defined by questions about customer and business requirements, overall functionality and future business potential.
What metrics do you need to ensure that product inventory is manageable and that the items actually exist?
To achieve the goal of meeting a customer's needs while delivering better quality products or new features faster than the competition, a product portfolio should consist of three types of work.
First, the functionality of the product or "business" and the correction of errors that match the specific needs of the customer. Second, activation functions, such as B. the work required to "activate" or support future business functions, or to improve development and quality. Third, technical debt and maintenance, like code refactoring and other activities that optimize agility and speed to market.
The teams can use their shared understanding of the broader vision and purpose to continuously optimize delivery speed and make decisions about what is appropriate for the backlog. Not only does a team have a clear and shared understanding of the vision, they also need a mechanism and process to manage the selection process. Tactically, a team can use a Kanban board to implement a set of guidelines that govern the decision-making process for filtering the items added to a rollup. Care must also be taken to regularly balance the backlog with a reasonable amount of product functionality, trigger functionality, and technical debt work to maximize ROI and maintain agility and high performance.
How do you prioritize the items that are on your order book? Are you using a particular model or method to categorize and prioritize these elements of accumulation?
Although we vary and adjust the prioritization methods depending on the context, we always make sure that the approach brings objectivity to the decision-making process.
A commonly used and recommended method is to sequence jobs to optimize financial results. We prefer this method for three reasons: time is a non-negotiable resource; Resources are often limited or limited, such as budget or people; and third, the main goal is to provide customers with the greatest possible value and quality in the shortest possible time.
In practice, we use a formula to calculate the value / cost ratio of each item on the order book versus the rest. We use the main story point for the costs. For the value we use a combination of the following three elements: assumed economic benefit of the item, impact over time, and context.
The key is to determine the value of each item relative to the others on the order book. This approach is very similar to WSJF (Short Weighted Work First), but we adapt it to our context.
Which other stakeholders do you involve in the prioritization process and how do they help with decisions about what should be prioritized and when?
Our general rule of thumb is to always work with three stakeholders: those who know best the value of priority features; those who know more about the value of enabling features; and those who are closer to the effort of the article.
With each group, we can determine both the value of a feature and its cost. This, in turn, allows us to calculate the value / cost ratio of each feature in order to sequence them and optimize the economic results.
Flatfile Inc.
Flatfile wants to hire more engineers this year. As a lean team, however, Product Manager Randy Wiafe emphasizes the importance of prioritizing certain product features based on the effort required. To do this, according to Wiafe, employees rely on the RICE framework and use impact, effort, and broader targeting as metrics to help reduce the backlog.
What metrics do you need to ensure that product inventory is manageable and that the items actually exist?
We first ask ourselves what problem we are trying to solve. Product development shouldn't be about individual functional requirements. Examining applications from the perspective of the identified problem helps reduce the delay.
We're also considering our overall North Star goal, which is to create a one-click import solution. Will this feature or request contribute to this overall goal? With this aim we can determine whether an item is really in the product queue.
These four factors can help product managers determine which features to include on the roadmap. ''
How do you prioritize the items that are on your order book?
At Flatfile, we love the RICE method, which allows us to evaluate and prioritize backlog items. The RICE method stands for reach, effect, trust and effort. These four factors can help product managers determine which features to include on the roadmap.
We generally pay more attention to impact and exertion. As a relatively small team, we want to prioritize the features that will have the greatest impact on our prospect or prospect. If we can develop a feature that will attract more potential prospects to take a look at flat file, this should be prioritized. A small team means we're stretched. And as we hire more engineers in 2020, we need to think about how much effort it will take to create some product functionality.
Which other stakeholders do you involve in the prioritization process and how do they help with decisions about what should be prioritized and when?
Several team members are involved in setting product priorities. I speak to our customer success department weekly to better understand our customer base and how deep the role needs to be for customers to be happy and engaged with the product. I also need to understand customer use cases related to product inquiries.
I speak to members of the sales team to get an idea of the inquiries that are coming from potential customers. Are there any models? Are there any product features that make it easier to get bids? Obviously, technical staff must be involved in properly defining the time commitments. I often involve our CEO to discuss priorities with him.
IntelePeer
Shaughnessy Speirs, Senior Product Manager, has found that professional colleagues in their field can easily become frustrated by the inevitable backlog of software development. But Speirs himself believes that if you look carefully, the disorder can be generative. At IntelePeer , Speirs said she transferred the project backlog if she and her team were convinced they wanted to explore more.
What metrics do you need to ensure that product inventory is manageable and that the items actually exist?
My backlog is definitely getting complicated, which in my opinion cannot be completely avoided. At the beginning of 2020, I basically filed for bankruptcy retrospectively by starting a new Jira project and deferring the old one. Software development is a complicated business. This often frustrates product managers who have a tendency to keep things messy. But I think disorder can be generative. The key is to be careful. Regularly fertilize with good ideas and new details and remove weeds.
I always try to improve, but overall I don't think it's a good time to index too much to keep the build in order.
Even so, I think it is good practice to limit direct access to accumulation itself. Instead, collect great ideas on a separate channel and only move them to your to-do list when you want to explore them further. We have no outstanding accumulation. I myself collect the ideas through conversations, emails and support tickets that are sent to me. At some point we will soon open a role admission form so we can collect specific details about the use case and value.
Software development is a complicated business. ''
How do you prioritize the items that are on your order book?
My preferred framework for prioritization is a simple value-complexity matrix (also known as impact / effort) that visually represents items by value and complexity in quadrants leading to "Do Now", "Do Now", "Maybe Do" will 'and' not.
I don't think you really need to use a framework to do this. At IntelePeer, we constantly calibrate the customer or business value as well as the technical or design challenges in real time.
Mapping User Stories is another valuable exercise that has broken down a large abstract problem into activities and ultimately stories. Prioritizing iterations focuses our efforts and allows us to build a small piece of functionality within a problem.
Which other stakeholders do you involve in the prioritization process and how do they help with decisions about what should be prioritized and when?
Customers are the most important part of the equation. We try to speak directly to our customers as much as possible. However, as a B2B product company, we also rely on our sales and customer success teams to better understand our customers' problems. How does this feature reduce the time agents spend on the phone? How much less time does it take to create or change our flow of communication? How will this improve the usability of our phone menu or SMS chatbot from the end customer's point of view? We want to see how this feature affects our customer records and the satisfaction of your customers.
Complexity is, of course, an important part of the evolution equation. We bring teams like Development, Engineering, Security, Legal, and Operations to understand what it takes to design, build, and launch a secure and compliant offering. All of these factors determine if and when we decide on a project.
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