Most Efficient Frameworks for Product Managers
To make decisions on the battlefield when pressure from all sides takes courage. But it takes more than that; it’s strategy and persuasion.
For Product Managers like me, every day is a war day — with business, sales, customer experience, CEO, CTO etc. Everyone wants their “stuff” to be built and shipped. But how to manage it?
Theoretically, we are provided with hundreds of frameworks that can help us logically — which feature should be built first. But in this blog, I am sharing the more efficient ones that have helped me a lot so far.
Secret: Honestly, it’s always a mixture of two or three, along with opinions from your managers :)
- The Kano Model: This model helps prioritize features based on customer satisfaction. It categorizes elements into three types: primary, performance, and excitement. Basic features are necessary for the product to function, performance features improve the product’s quality, and excitement features add unique value to the product.
2. The Eisenhower Matrix: This framework categorizes tasks into four quadrants based on urgency and importance. Lessons can be urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not necessary, or neither urgent nor essential. This helps product managers prioritize tasks based on their level of importance and urgency.
3. The MoSCoW Method: This method prioritizes features based on their importance: Must have, Should have, Could have, and Would like to have. This method helps product managers identify the most critical features and prioritize them accordingly.
4. The RICE Framework: This framework prioritizes features based on Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. Reach is the number of users that will be affected by the quality, Impact is the degree to which the feature will affect the users, Confidence is the degree to which the team is confident in their ability to deliver the quality, and Effort is the amount of time and resources required to provide the feature.
5. The Value vs Effort Matrix: This framework prioritizes features based on their value to the user and the Effort required to implement them. Components are plotted on a matrix with value on one axis and Effort on the other. The features with high value and low Effort are considered the most important and should be prioritized.
These are some of the more popular frameworks that product managers can use to prioritize their backlogs, there are many more, and the best one for you will depend on your specific product and team.
Which one is your best one?
