Sunday Rewind: Four questions that will lead to better prioritisation

This week’s Sunday Rewind is a 2018 post in which product leader Lisa Long digs into some important questions about prioritisation. Prioritisation, she says, helps us move forward so that we can learn and narrow the uncertainty of the next round of things we need to build.

What questions help you to find the thing that should be on the top of your list?

What is your product meant to solve?

Remember the purpose of your product. By returning to the core value proposition of your product, you can ask whether the proposed work would further this goal.

What’s the most important problem you’re trying to solve now and why?

Lisa says that, for any product, there is typically a list of things that people would like to fix. You need to hear the pain points that are behind these wishlists, and get at the problems behind them.

Ask your stakeholders to give you their top two problems, then drill down into why these two were selected.

Are there any external factors you need to consider?

Hard deadlines need to be considered in the prioritisation process. There are real world consequences to not having relevant features in place – legal fees, missed marketing opportunities, and government fines are just a few of the business consequences.

If you didn’t do something, what bad things would happen?

This is the anti-pattern question. Lisa says that while many things that call for our attention imagine a new and better world as a result of doing the work, there are things that require a more defensive mindset. Security teams tend to revel in the terrors of the possible, but we also need to consider the probable when it comes to assessing the results of not doing the work.

Read the original post: Four questions that will lead to better prioritisation