As a Product Manager, I’ve learned that the toughest decisions often come down to saying 'no'—to features, ideas, and even stakeholders. How do you handle prioritization when everything feels important?

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I usually stack rank features and ideas using RICE (reach, impact, confidence and effort), but even if you use just I and E you should get to a good stack rank. The important thing is that every item has its own priority (there shouldn’t be 2 or 3 priority 1’s). Then you draw the cut line at the total resources you have available (effort estimates should give you that answer).

Aside from providing clarity on how things were prioritized, it should also serve as a great resource for conversations with leadership about what impact you could drive if you had more resources, or how a phased release approach for larger features could deliver impact sooner.

This should also help you say no to stakeholders who are in love with certain features (or pet projects), or at least have the conversation about what high priority features should be dropped to fit in their pet project. :)

Hope this helps!

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I put it back to my stakeholders exactly like that. "If everything is important, then nothing is important."

That usually shakes loose some directional priorities. Then I threaten them with making them calculate WSJF if they can't force rank anything. 😅

likefunny

I feel this!! I try to break down the asks because sometimes what they think they want…isn’t what they say. It might even be simpler (or they might be content with a smaller item for now).

I will also try to break down for internal stakeholders what the options are because we cannot do it all.

Lastly I try to think about the impact of each item vs difficulty to do it. If I can get a few smaller easy wins, vs a task that will take a lot longer, sometimes it’s worth it or mixing those in.

All in all…you cannot please everyone and trying to do so will make you crazy. 🤪

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The answer to the question lies in how much data can you obtain to make that decision. The data could be competitive info, ROI analysis, win/loss data, potential ARR related to that feature. You are absolutely right. The hardest part of PM’s job is prioritization. Companies that get it right are really good at data driven practices. Once you have the data, you can make the right choices, align teams and get buy in from stakeholders

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Saying “no” I don’t think is fruitful. Explaining to people the cost of saying yes and what taking on new work delays has been much more productive and less combative for me.

If you work in a highly politicized environment, with an escalation culture, saying “no”, and not explaining why, can lead to undesirable outcomes.

Yes, you eventually have to convey to people “no”, but getting to no gently makes all the difference in your relationships and people’s willingness to work with you in the future.

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The question isn’t about whether or not you should build something, the question is which should you build first given the information you have available? Saying “No” is just about placing bets on which ideas will most likely move the needle on an objective. Align all cross functional teams to OKRs, focus relentlessly on those objectives and prioritise the best bets that will move those key results. Everything else is a distraction.

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