Fritz Mueller

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Prioritizing Features

• Fritz Mueller

Director of Product Management
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Prioritizing

• What gets done
• Gather Requirements
• Prioritize
• Write the Plan
• How it gets done
• Defending and selling the plan
• If you cannot defend the plan, the priorities
  will get changed.

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Prioritizing

• The Ideal Do all positive Net Present Value
  (NPV) projects.
• Reality What rules do you use to decide on the
  tradeoffs

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Sources of Input
Customers
New Technology
Long Term Fixes
Embattled Prod. Mngr.
Competitors
Support
Engineering
Cool Features
Sales
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Rule 1 Identify the Customer

• Identify the customer or else
• You will only listen to the vocal customers
• You will define too broad a group of customers
• You will not solve anyone's problems or needs

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Rule 2 - Categorize
Big Payoff
Little Payoff
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Easy
1
Generates Momentum
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X
Difficult
High Risk
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Rule 3 - Balance

• Frequent Customer Requests
• Press
• Competitive Response
• Engineering Ideas
• Long Term Architecture Issues
• New Technologies
• Support
• Development Costs

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Optimal Balance

• You have to balance so what is the optimal
  balance?
• Most common requests
• Press Demo Features
• Competitive Response
• Lifecycle of Product
• Target Market

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Rule 4 Disruptive Change

• While you are refining the product some else is
  redefining the space.
• Be the first to sound the alarm and state a
  response plan with a reasonable first step.

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Customer Input Risks

• What customers ask for and buy are different
• Understand why do customers stay with you
• Technical vocal minority vs. silent majority

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Causes of Confusion

• If you cannot decide on a plan then.
• Too diverse a customer set or not sure who the
  customer is.
• Not confident about defending the plan
• Market is changing
• You saturated the market

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Handling Confusion

• If you cannot decide on a plan then.
• Too diverse a customer set. split the line and
  segment the market or focus.
• Not confident about defending the plan talk to
  more customers
• Market is changing new product line needed or
  company must change
• You saturated the market expand the definition
  of the market you are in.
• If you still cannot decide then the company may
  be in trouble and have no safe direction

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Rule 5 Dont Forget the Basics

• Who is the customer?
• What do they value?
• Is the product consistent with the marketing
  plan?
• Is the product consistent with the corporate
  strategy?
• Dont go into a market half way. Do go in one
  step at a time. (Honda)

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Implementing the Plan

• The biggest problem is defending your plan
  because any plan you come up with will be
  questioned.

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Rule 6 Sell the Plan

• You will never make everyone happy.
• Since not everyone is happy you need to convince
  everyone that you have the best possible plan and
  any other plan would be worse.

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Interested Parties
Sales, Customers
Eng.
Senior Mngmt.
Prod. Mngr.
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Selling the Plan

• Senior Management
• Q Why are we doing ?
• A Strategic answer
• Sales
• Q When do we get?
• A The most requested features are and we are
  working on them.
• Engineering
• Statement I am going to build
• Response Customers dont want it or they wont
  pay for it or it will take too long to build.
• Customer
• Q Why should I care about?
• A It will solve a huge problem for you.

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Senior Management

• This is our customer
• This is why they buy
• This is where the market is going
• This is why we will win
• Therefore the product plan has these features

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From PM to CEO
Corporate Strategy
Successful corporate strategy is built from the
bottom up.
Product Strategy
Customer Requests
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Summary

• 1 - Identify the Customer
• 2 - Categorize
• 3 - Balance
• 4 - Watch Disruptive Change
• 5 - Basics
• 6 - Sell the Plan