Product Makers Product Talks

Algorithmic feature prioritization

Gabriel Steinhardt

On May 18, 2023 Gabriel Steinhardt joined us to share his approach to algorithmic feature prioritization.

Key takeaways

  • A product’s functional capability is to satisfy a specific customer need with a set of product features or capabilities
  • Effectively prioritizing enables product teams to choose the right features that solve real market problems and drive value. The decisions here are important and impact development effort and subsequent activities. Teams need to be efficient, while optimizing for many different factors, and come out of this process able to identify missing or redundant features, build roadmaps and deliver value.
  • Most often prioritization is challenging, filled with unstructured debate, semi-structured debate, ranking and scoring methods that are abstract, time-consuming, or don’t scale, and lead to scope creep.
  • Gabriel shared his Boolean-based algorithmic approach that considers where a feature has a dependency, is fundamental, a differentiator, and its overall importance. The approach is simple, yet flexible enough to include other factors, and can help teams identify a plan.

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