Better Product Managers, and Product Management

There is no contradiction in saying “listen to your customers” and “you own the product vision”.

You will get lots of requests for features from your customers (and from your sales team, and from execs within your company). Most of them, if you implemented them as-is, would be at best a waste of developer resources and money.

But it’s rarely an option to just ignore them, or keep de-prioritizing them to next release cycle – many requests for solutions are obscured insights into problems.  It’s your job as a product manager to think about those problems and figure out which ones are compatible with your longer-term strategy.

Here’s how you say “no” and make it stick:

1. Acknowledge the feature request (using the requestor’s own words)
2. Explain the problem that lead to this request.  (may need to ask the requestor to clarify their request, but this is your synthesis)
3. Describe the cost (in developer hours, lost opportunity cost, investment in obsolete technology, etc.)
4. Show lack of connection to the product/company vision
5. Acknowledge consequences of simply ignoring request
6. Define actionable next steps (turn it into an opportunity)

Download the template (with example features)

This framework puts the focus on the product vision – the equivalent of asking everyone, “What are we here to do? Does this help us do that? No? Then why would we do it?”  (Cue Herb Kelleher story about no damn chicken salad sandwiches.)

It also highlights problems rather than features (proposed solutions).  Features can often be incompatible with a strategy even when the problem is very relevant.  It’s our job to listen.  Tackle that feature prioritization list and start saying no!

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