How to prioritize product ideas: Product scoring and idea prioritization frameworks
Almost every product idea has potential. Suggestions for new features and enhancements come from many sources — customers, partners, executives, colleagues, and the product development team. If you are fortunate, those product ideas flow as a continuous stream. (It might not always feel like a good thing, but trust us … the only thing worse than too many ideas is too few.)
Let’s assume the flow of product ideas is strong. Maybe it even feels like a deluge at times. Requests can pile up with stakeholders eagerly asking when their idea will be implemented. And the longer it takes you to review and evaluate those ideas, the longer your customers will have to wait for improvements that could make their lives easier. You aim to identify and prioritize the product ideas that are worth developing.
Product managers are always looking for ways to improve the various stages of product development. Often attention is focused on the development phase — how the core product development team can work better together. But a lot of the challenges that pop up during that phase can be mitigated when you are intentional about what happens at the very beginning, before any user stories are written or roadmaps are shared.
Idea prioritization infers that you have an idea management process in place. Meaning: You have an established method for collecting, organizing, and evaluating requests for new features and enhancements. Raw concepts must then be refined and vetted before you can choose what to invest in next.
This guide reveals some of the best ways to prioritize product ideas and identify the most valuable features. But before before we get into how product managers do that work, it is worth revisiting the fundamentals of idea management — the backbone of your product development process. You can always skip ahead to the section that your team needs the most help with now:
Importance of idea management in prioritizing features
Why is it that you can never find the item you need when you most need it? Anyone who has completed a DIY home project can relate. There are always more trips to the hardware store than you expected, to buy things you likely already own (but cannot locate). Building a product can feel that way at times, especially when you are working across different tools.
Email, instant message, bug tracking tools, customer feedback polls, and passing comments in meetings — these are all common channels for folks to share product input. With ideas scattered like this, it is impossible to create a repeatable process for evaluation and prioritization. And as a result you are missing out on real insights, such as trending themes across feedback. The result is a “black box” effect.
Many product development teams solve this with purpose-built idea management software. A tool like Aha! Ideas offers everything needed to streamline the process — with customizable collection portals, prioritization templates, and rich reporting functionality.
Software like Aha! Ideas makes it easy to create repeatable processes and consolidate idea collection. But even if your team is stuck in the mess of scattered submissions, you can follow idea management best practices:
Define the workflow: Develop a checklist that product managers can follow when reviewing ideas and set a goal for idea review — one week or less is a good timeframe.
Centralize collection: Create one repository or channel for submitting and reviewing ideas. This cuts down on time spent searching across different tools.
Weed out bugs: Product fixes should immediately be moved to your backlog to be investigated.
Merge duplicates: Merge similar ideas so each one is unique — while retaining any details or nuances from the separate entries. Existing functionality should be culled here too.
Align with strategy: Map every idea to a strategic goal or initiative, if possible. (Ideas that do not support current strategy may still be worth pursuing.)
Add a rough score: Give an initial high-level score using consistent criteria that you will use throughout the product development process — such as strategic alignment, effort to build, and customer need.
Organize by theme: Group related ideas into categories based on areas of functionality or customer segments so that you can see a high-level view of trends.
Update the status: Using all of the information above, decide whether this idea is something you are likely to build, unlikely to build, will not build, or already exists.
Respond quickly: Whether you respond directly or send automated messages or notifications, keep submitters updated on the status of their idea — if you do not plan to implement the idea, share why.
Once you have reviewed, scored, and categorized every idea, your product team should be ready to add a few to your product backlog — where you can further define and eventually add to your product roadmap or next release.
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