Product Managers: 3 Key Concepts to Keep in Mind While Prioritising Your Feature Backlog

Regardless of whether you're a junior, mid-level, or senior executive Product Manager, prioritising your feature backlog will play a significant role in how you perform. Prioritising features will give you clarity on how your product will look as time passes, as well as ensures that what you produce will be of the highest quality it can be. Fortunately or unfortunately however, prioritisation can be done in a multitude of ways, and there isn't a "one size fits all" solution. It's great practice to evaluate a number of techniques, and choose what works for you, your company, and your product.

Tomer London, the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Gusto gives us a framework to do just that in his article Comparing Apples and Oranges: A New Prioritization Framework for Product Managers. The cloud-based payroll and HR company knows what it takes to get a high-quality product out the door, and place a large amount of importance in how they prioritize. London talks about how it's often easy to compare features that are similar in nature to one another -- apples to apples -- but more notably, gives us a framework to compare features greatly differing in characteristics -- what he calls apples to oranges. Using frameworks like the impact matrix, he shows us how we can make better informed decisions for our users.

Image from Chron

Jeff Betts, former Product Manager at Google, also endorses using frameworks in feature prioritisation, and places a large amount of importance on measuring impact. He talks about giving users the chance to voice how much of an impact a feature would make, and mentions how building that - as well as potential costs -- in as factors in the framework you use is key. Betts also talks about OKRs -- objectives and key results -- and stresses the point that as Product Managers, it's important to define what success means early on, and measure your product against it as your project gathers steam. The factors you include in your framework will play a defining role in what your product will look like.

Based on these articles, it's clear that there are a few actions you should adopt:

1. Use the matrix: Gusto’s customer impact vs. expectations matrix is a great tool to judge your next feature against, as is Jeff Bett's cost vs impact framework. Think about what structures help you in evaluating your feature or product -- it could be the difference between a successful offering and a confused one.

2. Think numbers: Numbers give you an objective measure of success. Wherever possible, quantifying measures important to your product will give you a greater sense of clarity.

3. Visualize success: Think of what your successful product looks like, and make sure your team does as well. One key responsibility of a Product Manager is to maintain the vision of a product, and motivate his team members to uphold it.

The next time you're confused about what features to throw into your product mix, think frameworks and metrics, as well as what your ideal product looks like.

Author: Tav Agarwal is a senior at Northwestern University studying Economics, Computer Science, and Marketing. Tav is passionate about how technology can have a positive impact on society, and spends his time looking up cool new products. Follow Tav on Twitter, or connect with him on Linkedin to learn more!  

Product Marketers: 3 Action Items to Keep in Mind About VR and IOT

        

As a product manager, Virtual Reality (VR) and the Internet of Things (IoT) poses interesting challenges - as these technologies become more accessible to consumers, you have to think about how to position these new technologies to consumers. As an undergraduate at Northwestern University studying Psychology, Business Institutions, Integrated Marketing Communications, and Entrepreneurship, I have found two interesting articles for product marketers that relate technology to psychology and could help them become aware of the impacts of VR and AI on the consumer psyche.

“What Does Virtual Reality Do to Your Body and Mind?,” in the Wall Street Journal by Jack Nicas and Deepa Seetharaman discusses the side effects to using Virtual Reality, a topic often glossed over by the media. Although Virtual Reality is an innovation that will contribute greatly to the future of technology, there are potential side effects of using VR. Many people in the tech industry, especially consumers themselves, haven’t considered that there are potential psychological effects after using VR. For example, after 30 minutes of using VR, consumers are advised to take a 10-minute break because of the effects it can have on our perceptual capabilities. Using VR can also cause fear and anxiety, as consumers are completely immersed into an alternate universe. Product marketers need to take these facts into consideration before mass marketing VR to consumers.

Source: The Guardian

In a TechCrunch article titled, “AI is not athreat to humanity, but an Internet of ‘Smart’ Things may be,” Abdalla Kablan discusses what occurs with Artificial Intelligence is integrated with the Internet of Things. Artificial Intelligence has been combined with Internet of Things to enable certain technologies to have brain-like intelligence. With the way this technology has been progressing, it is possible that soon robots can predict distinct human emotions like human irrationality. This could pose a threat to humans in the future, which is a scary reality for consumers. The differences between human nature and technology are slowing being blurred with each new innovation in AI and consumers are taking notice, thus product marketers must keep this in mind as they start to educate consumers about AI and IoT.

I have developed 3 action items product marketers should consider as they start to strategize how to bring Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence products to market, especially as these innovations because cheaper and more accessible.

-       Avoid the creepy - Don’t scare consumers away from the AI and IOT combination; frame this innovation in a positive light.  

-       Be aware -  Acknowledge the dangers of VR by always being vigilant.

-       Tell the truth - Make sure consumers know about the potential side effects of using VR.

Based on an analysis of these two articles and my experience at Northwestern, I believe that as Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality continue to grow, transform, and become more accessible to consumers, product marketers must think of the broader impacts these technologies have on the psychology of consumers 

Neha Kumar is a senior at Northwestern University studying Psychology and Business with a concentration in Integrated Marketing Communications and Entrepreneurship. She is particularly interested in product marketing, consumer behavior, and entrepreneurship.

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