Prioritization. How to do it right.

Here is a story you might have heard before, but is nonetheless one of my favorites:

A philosophy professor stood before his class with a large empty jar.

He filled the jar with rocks and asked if it was full. The students agreed it was.

He then poured pebbles into the jar, shaking it lightly so they filled the spaces between the rocks. Again, he asked if the jar was full, and the students said yes.

Next, the professor poured sand into the jar. The sand filled everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous "Yes."

The professor then produced two bottles of beer from under the table and poured them into the jar, filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

"This jar represents your life," the professor explained. "The rocks are the important things—your family, health, and loved ones. The pebbles are the other things that matter, like your job and house. The sand is everything else—the small stuff."

"If you put the sand in first, there’s no room for the pebbles or rocks. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time on the small stuff, you’ll never have room for the important things. Pay attention to what’s critical to your happiness. Spend time with your family. Take care of your health. There will always be time for the small stuff."

One student raised her hand and asked “what did the beers represent?”. 
The professor smiled. "It just shows that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of beers with a friend."
 
 

Just as the professor's demonstration underscores the importance of prioritizing the significant aspects of life over the trivial, the same principle applies to managing feature requests in product development. 
In the hectic world of tech startups, it’s easy to get bogged down by countless minor features, much like the sand in the jar. Without a structured approach, you risk missing out on what truly adds value to your product and your business.

That’s where “UV's Features Prioritization Method” comes in. Inspired by the need to focus on what really matters, this method helps you sort through the chaos of feature requests and identify the ones that will make the most impact. By categorizing and evaluating each feature based on specific criteria, you can ensure that your product roadmap is aligned with both user needs and business goals.

The 3 boards of the "feature-prioritization-tool" enable you to easily:

• Decide which features should go in your product roadmap
• Decide which features should be developed first
• Easily Communicate your reasoning with the management, clients or any other stakeholders

By placing your backlog features along the different parts of the template you can easily find out which features need to be prioritized higher.

Check out the template here
 

This framework uses a features’ backlog prioritization as an example, but the same technique works the same for any group of topics that needs prioritizing.

Preliminary step: access the “Feature-prioritization-tool Miro template”, and click the purple “Use template” button on the top right corner.
Note - you might need to set up a quick free Miro Account if you don’t already have one.
 

STEP 1 

• Transfer your backlog features list onto this miro board using sticky notes. 
• Copy this list twice more, so you will have 3 identical backlog lists - 1 list for each of the template boards. 

(Pro Tip: Miro automatically converts table-based lists from common apps like 'excel' or ' sheets' to sticky notes - Simply copy-paste your list onto the miro board, and watch the magic happen...) 

STEP 2

• Place your notes on the most suitable location on each of the boards (see boards description below for additional info) 

STEP 3 

• Start placing the best-performing features on your "Roadmap Features Ranking" list: Begin with the features that were placed on best places on all 3 boards. 
• Then proceed and list after them the ones that were placed on best places on 2 out of 3 boards, etc.

THE RESULT
A sorted list of features, indicating your recommended prioritization for your Product roadmap.  

BOARD #1 - 'USAGE FREQUENCY' vs 'NUMBER OF USERS'

• 'Usage frequency' = How often will people use this feature? 
• 'Number of users' = How many people will ever use this feature? 

Example - "Mobile app Onboarding sequence" would be used by all users, but only once

BOARD #2 - 'COMPANY GOALS' vs 'USER GOALS'

• 'Company goals' = How well will this feature help achieve the company goals?
• 'User goals' = How well will this feature help the user achieve his own goals? 

Example - "integrate new ad-unit type" might have high impact on company goals, but little impact on the user goals for originally using your product 

BOARD #3 - 'EFFORT' vs 'REWARD'

• 'Effort' = The amount of work & resources it would cost to build this feature
• 'REWARD' = The estimated positive impact this feature might have on your target KPIs 

Example - "Enable user-generated board templates" might require Medium-High development effort, but would most likely result in high reward by increasing retention and engagement KPIs

As always, if you need some help working out this template - or better yet, would like to maximize it by running a dedicated workshop, reach out to us at pandush.com. We'd love to help you out.