Sunday, November 24, 2013

Importance of listing reasons for NOT building the new feature

There are many aspects to building a successful product including the product roadmap & pricing of new features commensurate to investment. While building the roadmap, it is important to consider sequencing as sequential synergies can help you unlock subsequent opportunities as lower cost. This is to say that timing matters as much as features on roadmap. When a certain feature is timed right, it will deliver significant value, & when ill-timed, it will become a liability & possibly sink a young product.

My sense is that most product managers get the ideas part of the roadmap right, thanks to diverse stream of information from sales to customer success to customers themselves. However, they struggle with "right-timing" these features. This problems scales all the way from establishing a roadmap for the next year to establishing priorities for the next sprint.

When trying to determine when to build (be it next sprint, next month or next quarter), I find that it is equally valuable to list why you shouldn't build a certain feature now. This enables healthy reflection from the negative space, and makes the prioritization & timing problem more information complete.

In addition, here are some other signals that you are prioritizing for the wrong reasons


  • If you find yourself saying "We need to build it eventually, so why not now?", this is likely a bad reason
  • If you find yourself saying "How much effort can it be to build this?", you are likely building it for the wrong reason & of course ignoring total cost of ownership of whatever you are building
  • If you find yourself saying "Stakeholder X will be happy if we build this", you are likely prioritizing for the wrong reason. At this time, it is best to have a conversation with Mr. X
  • If you find yourself saying "It will make some future important item easier to build", you are likely prioritizing for the wrong reason. Note, if you find yourself saying "it will ALSO make the future important item easier to build", you are finding additional basis for an already sound priority.