What is Prioritization?

Ruben Buijs
2 minutes • Aug 10, 2023 • Product Management

Prioritization is the process of ranking tasks, features, or projects based on their level of importance and urgency. It helps product managers determine which items should be addressed first, ensuring that resources are allocated effectively and goals are achieved in a timely manner.

Importance of Prioritization

Effective prioritization is crucial for successful product management. It allows teams to focus on the most critical tasks, avoid wasting time on low-value activities, and deliver value to customers efficiently. By prioritizing effectively, product managers can align their efforts with business objectives, maximize the return on investment, and meet customer needs and expectations.

How to Use Prioritization

  1. Identify goals and objectives: Clearly define the goals and objectives of your product or project. This will provide a framework for prioritizing tasks and features.

  2. Evaluate urgency and impact: Assess the urgency and impact of each task or feature. Urgency refers to how soon a task needs to be completed, while impact indicates the potential value it will bring to the product or organization.

  3. Consider dependencies: Take into account any dependencies between tasks or features. Prioritize items that are prerequisites for others or have a significant impact on subsequent tasks.

  4. Assign weights or scores: Assign weights or scores to each task or feature based on their importance, urgency, and impact. This can be done through a collaborative process involving stakeholders and team members.

  5. Rank and order: Use the assigned weights or scores to rank and order the tasks or features. This will provide a clear order of execution and guide the allocation of resources.

  6. Regularly review and adjust: Prioritization is an ongoing process. Regularly review and adjust the prioritization to reflect changes in business objectives, customer needs, or market conditions.

Useful Tips for Prioritization

  • Involve stakeholders: Seek input from stakeholders, team members, and customers to gain different perspectives and insights during the prioritization process.

  • Focus on customer value: Prioritize tasks or features that will bring the most value to customers. This ensures that efforts are directed towards improving the user experience and addressing their pain points.

  • Consider effort and feasibility: Take into account the effort and feasibility of implementing each task or feature. Sometimes, low-effort items can be prioritized to achieve quick wins or build momentum.

  • Revisit and reprioritize regularly: Priorities can change over time. Revisit and reprioritize regularly to adapt to evolving business needs, market dynamics, and customer feedback.

FAQ

Prioritization is the process of determining the importance or order in which tasks, features, or projects should be completed in a Saas product.
Prioritization helps product managers make informed decisions about what should be worked on first, ensuring resources are allocated effectively and customer needs are met.
Tasks can be prioritized by considering factors such as customer feedback, business goals, market trends, resource availability, and potential impact on the product's success.
Popular prioritization techniques include the MoSCoW method (Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Won't Have), the Eisenhower Matrix (Urgent vs Important), and the Kano Model (Basic, Performance, Excitement).
Customer feedback plays a crucial role in prioritization as it provides insights into customer needs, pain points, and desired features. This feedback helps prioritize tasks that address the most critical customer requirements.
Data analysis helps product managers make data-driven decisions by analyzing metrics, user behavior, market trends, and other relevant data. This analysis helps prioritize tasks based on their potential impact and aligns them with business goals.
Prioritization should be an ongoing process. It is recommended to regularly review and update priorities based on changing market conditions, customer feedback, business objectives, and resource availability.
Challenges in prioritization can include conflicting stakeholder opinions, limited resources, unclear business goals, changing market dynamics, and balancing short-term needs with long-term vision.
Collaboration among product managers, developers, stakeholders, and customers can help gather diverse perspectives, align priorities, identify dependencies, and make well-informed decisions during the prioritization process.
Yes, there are several tools available, such as product management software, project management tools, and prioritization frameworks, that can assist in the prioritization process by providing visualizations, data analysis, and collaboration features.

Article by

Ruben Buijs

Ruben is the founder of ProductLift. I employ a decade of consulting experience from Ernst & Young to maximize clients' ROI on new Tech developments. I now help companies build better products

Table of contents

  1. Importance of Prioritization
  2. How to Use Prioritization
  3. Useful Tips for Prioritization
  4. Related Terms

Ship features your users (really) want.
Collect feedback, prioritize ideas, and build a product your customers love with AI-powered tools for feedback boards, roadmaps, changelogs, and knowledge bases.

Get Started for Free

The faster, easier way to capture user feedback at scale

Join over 3,051 product managers and see how easy it is to build products people love.

Did you know 80% of software features are rarely or never used? That's a lot of wasted effort.

SaaS software companies spend billions on unused features. Last year, it was $29.5 billion.

We saw this problem and decided to do something about it. Product teams needed a better way to decide what to build.

That's why we created ProductLift - to put all feedback in one place, helping teams easily see what features matter most.

In the last four years, we've helped over 3,051 product teams (like yours) double feature adoption and halve the costs. I'd love for you to give it a try.

Ruben Buijs

Founder & Digital Consultant