The Game

20/20 Vision

Understand Customer Priorities

Effective product teams not only understand which set of features must be present to justify a release, they have carefully enumerated the ranking of each.^[8] They know which is "number one," which is "number two." They know which set of stakeholders care the most about number one, which care the most about number two, and so on. They also know that different market segments may not agree among these rankings, so they seek to understand differences among the market segments. The most effective product teams take this even further and can demonstrate how their prioritization supports larger business priorities (and when the business priorities aren't clear, these teams clarify them!). The challenge is understanding the underlying qualitative motivations to market-driven priorities.

^[8] Note: Effective products teams do not try to justify every possible feature for all releases at oncejust the set of features needed for the next release of their product (and perhaps a few more). Effective product teams do not spend the same amount of time prioritizing every feature. Some features are just too inconsequential to justify the effort.