Prioritizing Features; Three Questions About Product Management; SiriusDecisions 2015 Summit

Don’t Prioritize Features Based on Development Cost
One of the key responsibilities of a product manager is to decide what features and enhancements should be added to an offering. Product managers usually have a long list of ideas from a variety of sources – customer or sales requests, competitor products, executive “suggestions,” market research insight – and they need to figure out how to score each idea to separate the good from the bad and prioritize the good ones for development.

It’s fairly common for product managers to come up with their own spreadsheets or formulas to do this evaluation. I’ve seen dozens, if not hundreds, of different ones, and nearly all of them have one thing in common – there’s some input for development cost.

But as I explain on this post on the SiriusDecisions blog, you shouldn’t prioritize features based on development cost. Read the full post — Don’t Prioritize Features Based on Development Cost — to find out why not and see my three suggestions to avoiding this common product management trap.

Three Questions About Product Management
I was recently interviewed for The Product Mantra blog, where I was asked three questions about product management:

  1. Is “data driven decision-making” killing the innovative thinking among product owners?
  2. What are three things that you don’t want a product manager to spend his or her time on?
  3. What traits should one look for in a candidate while hiring for a product manager position in a b-to-b market?

My response the questions — and to the second question in particular — has generated a lot of interest. Read the full interview with my responses.

SiriusDecisions Summit 2015

We’re less than 30 days from the SiriusDecisions Summit 2015, our annual conference where over 2000 b-to-b product, marketing and sales leaders will get a chance to see data-driven best practices research, unveiling of new innovations across the b-to-b space and networking with an elite community of business leaders. Held May 12th-15th, this year’s event will take place at the historic and majestic Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, Tennessee.

Some of the highlights include:

  • A keynote by NBA legend and business mogul Earvin “Magic” Johnson
  • Eight SiriusDecisions keynotes in the general session, more than 50 total analyst sessions across nine tracks, and over 100 practitioner case studies
  • “SD101” sessions that provide introductions to some of the core models and frameworks that we use with product management leaders and their teams
  • A Green Tie Gala on Wednesday night, with musical guests Neon Trees — you probably recognize their song “Everybody Talks” (“It started with a whisper…”) — and a Titanium Block Party on Thursday night where we’ll be shutting down five lanes of traffic on Broadway to create an indoor/outdoor music festival vibe under the stars of Music City.

I put together some top track picks for product management leaders with my recommendations for sessions of most interest. (You can also see picks for other roles like product marketing.)

I’ll personally be presenting two sessions

  • Product Management: The Next-Generation Toolkit: This session with Jill Stanek from our technology practice will cover the emerging set of technologies that can be leveraged by product management, their business impact and the types of organizations that should consider them. This will be on Thursday, May 14, in the Product Management track in the afternoon.
  • The Keys to Succeeding With Integrated Solutions: This keynote presentation the morning of Friday, May 15 will cover the challenges and imperatives when developing and bringing to market solutions rather than individual standalone products.

There’s plenty of more information on ourSiriusDecisions 2015 Summit website. Hope to see you there!

What’s Hot on Twitter
Here are a few of my tweets that have generated the most interest recently; to get these in real-time, follow me at @jefflash: