Comments on: Product management is more than prioritizing features

By: Soumya Mitra

Soumya Mitra — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:37:06 +0000

This is a good article for any aspiring Product Manager. The major decision steps I take for prioritizing my product features are:

1) The product direction (road map)
2) Go to market strategy
3) Existing and future market demand of the feature
4) The cost to implement the feature versus projected revenue/customer satisfaction increase
5) Technical feasibility to implement the feature
6) Recurring cost to qualify the feature in future release.

Every seasoned PM has his/her own list of criterion which can vary a little from mine depending on your product, market segment etc. I recommend writing down the feature request decision making criterions to provide a structure to this process.

By: Top 10 Product Management Posts Of 2009 | Product Management Meets Pop Culture

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 16:43:36 +0000

[...] Product Management Is More Than Prioritizing Features // September 24, 2009 Jeff Lash explains how product managers can eaisly fall into feature-focused development mode; the dangers of falling into that trap; and ways to avoid or escape the feature prioritization spiral. [...]

By: Suliman Alrufai

Suliman Alrufai — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:21:03 +0000

keep up

By: Suliman Alrufai

Suliman Alrufai — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:16:16 +0000

Hi Jeff,
In case of products having similar features with minor differencis, how a product manager will allocate these on the same similar targets?

Regards

By: Peter Hanschke

Peter Hanschke — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:09:12 +0000

Hi Jeff, Totally agree with what you say in this post – many companies I’ve worked in viewed product management as a set of Product Managers responsible for features and requirements. In these companies my goal was to always move closer to the strategic end of the scale. To change the “requirements” mentality of the PM team, the team leader needs to change the game, e.g. putting in place personal objectives for each PM that are more strategic in nature, forcing the team to think more strategically. Yes, dev will whine – but they’ll get over it! My personal view is that product management needs to be a philosophy that’s pervasive throughout the organization (I recently blogged on this – http://bit.ly/3DKOv6). Once companies realize this, they’ll understand that product management is much more than features and requirements.

By: Tim Rochte

Tim Rochte — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:46:20 +0000

I think you are on to a really good point here about how what many people see as the core of Product Management is really a sign of immature PM work unless it is founded in a more complete, strategic framework. I riffed on this more on my own blog at http://timrochte.blogspot.com/2009/09/priorizing-features-is-last-thing-you.html

By: Saeed Khan

Saeed Khan — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 03:39:27 +0000

Jeff, welcome back.

It’s been a while since your last post. I’ll assume it was a long and relaxing summer holiday!

I wrote something on the same topic a while back called “Prioritizing features does not equal Product Management”.

Here’s a link.

http://tr.im/prioritizing_features