The Art of Product Prioritization According to Julie Zhuo
Sundial Co-Founder Julie Zhuo, talks about ways to determine what makes an impact to your customers.
By Tremis Skeete, for Product Coalition
When it comes to making your customers happy, it can seem like all the product development priorities are important. If you’re faced with challenges like this, Sundial Co-Founder Julie Zhuo talks about a few prioritization techniques in her LinkedIn post.
Practicing good prioritization comes down to focusing on customers that contribute the most value to your business; And to do this successfully requires a deep review into what matters the most.
While the process won’t be easy, Julie, according to her post, declares that it’s indeed doable.
In the product discipline, there are many prioritization techniques — some are more complicated than others; And what Julie recommends is arguably an approach towards simplifying prioritization.
Hopefully with Julie’s advice and tips, product leaders can add to their skillset, ways to order and separate tasks that need to be done now, from what needs to be done later.
Read a copy of Julie’s post below to learn more:
The Art of Product Prioritization
They say prioritize until it hurts.
How does it hurt?
You need to pick favorites between your users. Are you going to care more about Abbey who runs the mom-and-pop shop, or Dwight the CMO of large enterprise?
You need to dissolve the dream. Wouldn’t the product be amazing if we could do X, and Y and Z, and then we’ll deliver it on a silver platter? Yes it would be. But reality and past experiences says you can’t, at least not within the time frame you want. The dream is an illusion.
You need to pare down to what really makes an impact to your customer. Chuck out the less important things from your lifeboat so it can stay afloat. That pet feature you so loved but weighs a ton? That user request you’ve been dying to work on but only a handful of clients need? Strike it from the list.
For the things that really matter, you need to be like a dog on the hunt. Daily updates. Constant viligence. Jump over or dash around the obstacles. No excuses.
At the heart of prioritization is the treasure of greatest value: doing your best for the people you believe matter the most.
Say no to everything else so you can say yes to those people.
