How to prioritise product ideas?

Author: @skalskiw wojtekskalski.com

Wrong product prioritisation means: …waste of time and money, …not the best possible performance, …missing some great opportunities, …burning potential and energy of your team.

Why it matters??

Brainstorm Ideas

Define Goal

Prioritize Ideas

Three steps to prioritise product ideas!

In the first step you define a goal. This decision is crucial because it determines what kind of product ideas your team will generate later and how they will be prioritised.1

Define Goal

Define Goal

SpecificGood goal is…

Goal must be clear, include reasons, requirements and constraints.

MeasurableYou must know definition of done and be able to track progress on the way.

Relevant

Make sure that the goal is important and has significant impact.

Realistic Time-related

Team must be able to act on it and achieve it.

Make sure that the target date is defined.

This goal is too confusing: • What do you mean by retention? • Is it weekly retention, monthly retention,

frequency or DAU/MAU that we care about?

• What’s the level we aim at? • What’s the timeframe?

This goal is good assuming that: • It is important for your company

(relevance). • Your team has skills and tools to affect

and reach it (realistic). • Target date is reasonable based on

your experience (timeframe). • And so on…

Goal:Improve retention.

Goal:Improve 1 week retention by 50% till September 2016.

Bad Cool

Define Goal

The next step is a brainstorming session aimed at generating as many product ideas as possible. All of them concentrate on the goal defined in the first step.

Brainstorm Ideas

2

Brainstorm Ideas

Effective Brainstorming

SessionBest

PracticesRight

Participants+ =

Brainstorm Ideas

Invite people with various backgrounds to increase

diversity of ideas

Let everyone pitch an idea to make sure you do not miss anything interesting

Accept all ideas, do not discuss them yet to

unleash creativity

Participants must be senior enough to ensure the right quality of ideas

Practices Participants

Keep the meeting small (up to 6-10 people) to make

it effective

Involve team that will execute on the goal to

build sense of ownership

Ensure the right level of details for ideas to maintain

clarity while saving time

In this step product ideas generated during the brainstorming session are prioritised based on their impact, risk and technical complexity.

Prioritize Ideas

3

Prioritize ideas

Impact Confidence Ease

ICE SCORE (Sum of Scores)

How big impact this idea can have on a goal?

Scale: 1 - tiny impact (small tweak)10 - huge impact (new successful product line)

How certain are we about the success of this solution?

Scale: 1 - very risky project (probability close to 0%) 10 - completely safe (probability of 99%)

How difficult is this idea to develop?

Scale: 1 - very difficult (long development and high difficulty) 10 - super simple (quick and easy)

1-10 1-10 1-10

3-30

Prioritize ideas

Redesign mainpage to better reflect value proposition 4 8 6

ICEGoal: Increase activation by

40% by 01.06.2016

Build new notifications system to target inactive users

Redesign flow of new users to boost conversions

6 3 2

8 3 4

18

11

15

Ideas are assessed and ordered by ICE Score. The top one has the highest priority.

Brainstorm Ideas

Define Goal

Prioritize Ideas

Three steps to prioritise product ideas!

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wojtekskalski.com