5 Secrets to Prioritizing Your Product Roadmap

Welcome, Introductions & Webinar Overview

Roger Snyder | 00:00:00–00:02:10
Good morning everyone, and welcome to our webinar. My name is Roger Snyder, and I’m the VP of Marketing here at Productside. Today we’re discussing 5 Secrets to Prioritizing Your Product Roadmap and how to do it the right way.

I’m joined by two experts—Tom Evans and Jim Semick—who bring a tremendous depth of product management experience. Tom is a Senior Principal Consultant and Trainer at Productside, and he just wrapped up a class in Saudi Arabia remotely from Austin, Texas. Tom is recognized internationally for his work in product management, product marketing, international business, go-to-market strategies, and entrepreneurship. He’s helped startups through Fortune 500 companies create and launch successful products and has led business development efforts in both U.S. and global markets.

We also have Jim Semick, Co-Founder and Chief Strategist at ProductPlan. Jim believes that great products don’t happen by accident—it takes exceptional leadership to bring them to life. He’s passionate about empowering future product leaders to build products that solve real customer problems. For nearly 20 years, he’s taken disruptive software products from concept to market launch.

Thanks for being with us, Tom and Jim.

Tom Evans | 00:02:10–00:02:30
Thank you, Roger. Great to be here.

Jim Semick | 00:02:30–00:02:40
Thanks, Roger. I’m excited to be here.

Housekeeping & Community Resources

Roger Snyder | 00:02:40–00:04:00
Before we begin, a few housekeeping items. After today’s webinar, we encourage you to stay connected with the product community. Now more than ever, it’s important to engage with your peers. Our LinkedIn leadership group is a great place to do that—I’ll post the link in the chat.

Throughout the webinar, we welcome your questions. Use the question panel in GoToWebinar, and I’ll gather them for our Q&A at the end.

The most common question we receive is: “Can I watch the webinar later?”
And the answer is yes. You’ll receive a link to the recording after the session ends.

Before we move forward, let me briefly introduce Productside. Our mission is to empower product managers and product marketers with the knowledge and tools to deliver products that matter—products that matter to customers, to the business, and to the world. We offer complete solutions: training, certification, consulting, workshops, and product team transformation. Visit productside.com to learn more.

Introducing Tom Evans & Jim Semick

Roger Snyder | 00:04:00–00:05:00
As part of our Product Leadership Webinar Series, today we’re focusing on one of the most foundational skills for PMs: roadmap prioritization. More than half of today’s attendees are product managers or product marketing managers, which makes perfect sense—prioritization is one of the hardest and most critical skills in our profession.

All right, let’s get started with our first poll.

Audience Poll: What Products Do You Manage?

Tom Evans | 00:05:00–00:06:10
To kick things off, we want to understand what kinds of products you’re responsible for managing. You’ll see a poll pop up with several product categories. Choose the one that fits best for you.

We know product managers span many industries—software, hardware, consumer goods, services—and our goal is to tailor today’s content so it resonates with the products you work on.

Roger Snyder | 00:06:10–00:06:40
Results are coming in… and there’s a clear center of gravity today. Over 56% of you manage software or SaaS products. Services are next, followed by manufactured goods and hardware.

That aligns well with today’s content. Now let’s move into why prioritization is such a challenge.

Why Prioritization Is So Hard for PMs

Tom Evans | 00:06:40–00:08:45
Why do we even need prioritization? At first glance, it seems obvious—but the challenge is that product managers operate within multiple constraints.

You have competing expectations:

• Customer needs
• Company strategy
• Market forces
• Competitive threats
• Stakeholder opinions
• Engineering capacity

And you’re constantly balancing what benefits the customer versus what benefits the business. Add constraints like limited time, resources, and budget—and prioritization becomes extremely difficult.

To understand what frustrates you most, let’s run another poll.

Poll: What Do You Dislike Most About Roadmap Prioritization?

Tom Evans | 00:08:45–00:09:30
You’ll now see a poll asking: What do you dislike most about prioritizing your roadmap?

Options include:

• It feels too subjective
• Lack of clear corporate strategy
• Too many differing opinions
• Executives overruling decisions
• Too many constraints

Choose the one that resonates most with your experience, and we’ll share the results in a moment.

Poll Results & The Real Problem Behind Prioritization

Tom Evans | 00:09:30–00:10:40
All right, let’s take a look at the poll results. And this is interesting—because it aligns with what we’ve seen in many of our trainings.

The number one challenge you selected was:
“Lack of a clear corporate strategy.”

This is extremely common. If the company strategy is vague, constantly shifting, or simply not communicated well, it leaves product managers in a difficult position. You’re being asked to create a roadmap without a north star.

The second most selected challenge was:
“Executives overturning decisions.”

We’ve all been there, right? You carefully prioritize based on data, and then the highest-paid person’s opinion walks in the room and changes everything.

Next were:

• Too many competing opinions
• Too many constraints
• Prioritization feels overly subjective

This pattern shows us something important:
Most of what frustrates PMs during prioritization isn’t the work—it’s the environment.
And that is exactly what the Five Secrets help you solve.

Secret #1 — Establish Clear Strategic Context

Tom Evans | 00:12:40–00:14:35
The first secret is to establish context before you ever show a roadmap.

And by context, I mean two things:

1️⃣ The customer story

Start with the people you’re serving.

• What are their biggest pains?
• Where are they losing time, money, or opportunity?
• What do they want to accomplish?

Don’t jump straight to “here are the features on the roadmap.”
Start with:
“Here is what customers are struggling with, and here is what they need.”

When stakeholders understand the problem space, they’re far more likely to support your proposed solutions.

2️⃣ The market story

Next, zoom out beyond individual customers to the macro environment.

This includes:

• Competitive moves
• Industry shifts
• Regulatory changes
• Broader economic signals
• Technology trends (AI/ML, automation, cloud, etc.)

A powerful way to package this is through a Market Roadmap—a simple document that shows the top external forces shaping your product’s future.

And here’s the good news:
You don’t need to include everything.
Pull out the 20% of market forces that will drive 80% of your decisions.

Stakeholders need to see:
“The world is changing in these ways, and here’s what that means for our product.”

That context lays the foundation for rational, defensible prioritization.

Secret #2 — Align Your Roadmap to Product Strategy

Tom Evans | 00:16:10–00:18:05
Once we have market and customer context, we align with product strategy. A strong product strategy includes:

• The target markets and segments we’re prioritizing
• How we intend to win in those markets
• Our growth strategy
• The outcomes we’re aiming to deliver

If your roadmap cannot directly tie back to your strategy, then your roadmap becomes a list of opinions instead of a set of intentional decisions.

This is why product strategy is a decision filter.
It separates “good ideas” from “strategic priorities.”

And here’s a key point:
Product strategy shouldn’t change every quarter.
Maybe yearly. Maybe longer.
But if the strategy changes constantly, the roadmap becomes impossible to prioritize.

Jim Semick | 00:18:05–00:20:30
Yes, and I’ll add that in many companies, product managers are forced to operate without a clear corporate or product strategy. That’s why alignment becomes even more important.

If leadership hasn’t articulated strategy well, PMs can still:

• Clarify assumptions
• Document what they believe the strategy is
• Socialize it with key stakeholders

Often leadership will say, “Yes, that’s exactly what we mean,” even if they never wrote it down themselves.

And now you have a strategic anchor for prioritization.

When strategy is clear, the roadmap has purpose.
When strategy is unclear, the roadmap becomes a political battleground.

Secret #3 — Your Roadmap Is NOT a Development Plan

Jim Semick | 00:20:30–00:22:20
This is one of my favorite topics.
A roadmap is not a backlog.
A roadmap is not a project plan.
A roadmap is not a detailed engineering schedule.

A product roadmap is a strategic communication document.

It answers:

• Where are we going?
• Why are we going there?
• What outcomes do we plan to achieve?

A development plan answers:

• Exactly what will be built?
• In what order?
• At what level of effort?
• Within which sprint or milestone?

These serve completely different purposes.

That’s why roadmaps should avoid:
❌ Exact feature lists
❌ Sprint-level detail
❌ Precise dates
❌ Commitments 12 months out

Instead, use:
✔ Themes
✔ Problems to solve
✔ Outcomes
✔ Time horizons like “Now,” “Next,” “Later”

This is essential because Agile teams uncover more accurate estimates during development—not a year in advance.

Tom Evans | 00:22:20–00:24:00
And this matters because so many PMs update their roadmap weekly—sometimes daily.

When that happens, it’s almost always because:

• You’re using the roadmap as a backlog
• Engineering discoveries are constantly reshuffling priorities
• Executives want sprint-level detail far too early

A roadmap that changes every week is not a roadmap.
It’s a project plan wearing a roadmap costume.

A real roadmap should be stable enough that you can communicate it confidently—while still being flexible as strategy evolves.

Secret #4 — Choose a Consistent Prioritization Model

Tom Evans | 00:24:00–00:26:10
Now that we have context and strategy, the next secret is selecting a prioritization framework your whole team can align around.
There are dozens of models out there—20 to 30 at least—but they all boil down to a few core patterns.

And here’s the key:
The model you choose matters less than having one at all.

Why? Because when you have a shared model:

• Stakeholders know the rules of engagement
• Prioritization becomes structured instead of emotional
• You reduce back-and-forth debates
• Everyone understands why items land where they land

A great prioritization model helps you answer two questions:

1️⃣ Is this the right thing to do?
2️⃣ Is this the right time to do it?

You’re not looking for perfection.
You’re looking for clarity and repeatability.

Jim Semick | 00:26:10–00:29:00
Yes, and consistency is the magic here.
A good model reduces the “drive-by hallway requests” where a stakeholder says, “Hey, can we just add this one thing?”

Now you can say,
“Sure — let’s run it through the model.”
It depersonalizes the decision.

And remember:
A model is a decision-support tool, not an automatic decision maker.
It gives structure, but your strategic judgment still matters.

The next few sections walk through the most commonly used— and most effective —prioritization models.

Weighted Scoring Models

Tom Evans | 00:29:00–00:31:20
One of the most widely used approaches is weighted scoring.
We use a version at Productside that includes six key criteria:

• Size of customer problem
• Importance to target segment
• Revenue impact
• Competitive differentiation
• Strategic alignment
• Cost and effort

Each item is scored 0–5, multiplied by pre-defined weights, and summed to create a prioritization score.

And here’s the value:
You can tune the weighting to match your strategy.

Examples:

• If you’re in a growth year → increase weighting for new revenue
• If retention is slipping → increase weighting for customer problem severity
• If competition is heating up → raise the competitive differentiation weight

It turns prioritization from “Tom’s opinion” into a measurable, repeatable method.

Jim Semick | 00:31:20–00:33:00
At ProductPlan, our customers apply weighted scoring across thousands of roadmaps.
The key lesson is this:

Scoring is not perfect — but it forces healthy conversation.

People see their assumptions exposed.
Disagreements become visible.
Bias becomes easier to spot.

Weighted scoring gives you a first pass — a quantitative view — before layering in strategic judgment.

RICE Framework (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort)

Jim Semick | 00:33:00–00:35:15
The RICE model—popularized by Intercom—has become a favorite because it is:

• Simple
• Flexible
• Collaborative
• Easy to explain

RICE stands for:

• R — Reach: How many customers will be affected?
• I — Impact: How strongly will it improve their experience or outcomes?
• C — Confidence: How sure are we about our reach and impact estimates?
• E — Effort: How long will it take, in person-months or story points?

You calculate:
(Reach × Impact × Confidence) ÷ Effort

This gives you a relative priority score.

Reach makes it “how many.”
Impact makes it “how valuable.”
Confidence keeps you honest.
Effort ensures feasibility.

Tom Evans | 00:35:15–00:38:00
What PMs love about RICE is how it supports transparent conversations.
Instead of someone saying:

“I just feel this is important.”

You can respond with:

“Great — let’s walk through Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort together.”

If someone gives everything a high score, the C (Confidence) field becomes your truth detector.

RICE also works beautifully when paired with themes or strategic pillars, so you’re not comparing unrelated items.

Kano Model: Basic, Performance & Delighter Features

Jim Semick | 00:38:00–00:40:25
The Kano Model helps you categorize features by the kind of customer value they generate:

1️⃣ Basic (Must-Have)

Customers don’t rave about these — but they’ll definitely complain if they’re missing.

2️⃣ Performance

Features where more investment equals more satisfaction.
Example: faster load times.

3️⃣ Delighters

Unexpected features that create disproportionate excitement.

These create differentiation.
They generate word-of-mouth.
They build emotional connection.

And here’s the trap many PMs fall into:
They spend so much time chasing basics that they never ship delighters.

But basics don’t win markets.
Delighters do.

Tom Evans | 00:40:25–00:43:00
Exactly.
Even when you’re behind on your basics, you still need delighters— because they signal innovation and create enthusiastic customers.

A great delighter doesn’t have to be expensive.
Sometimes it’s a small but thoughtful touch that meets an unspoken need.

Kano is not a scoring model — it’s a lens.
It helps you make sure your roadmap includes:

• Stability (basics)
• Competitiveness (performance)
• Differentiation (delighters)

Four-Quadrant Prioritization & “Buy a Feature” Method

Tom Evans | 00:43:00–00:45:50
Another technique is the Value vs. Effort Quadrant, which plots items across:

• High value / low effort → 🚀 Do these first
• High value / high effort → Strategic investments
• Low value / low effort → Maybe
• Low value / high effort → ❌ Avoid

It’s fast, visual, and perfect for workshops or exec sessions.

You can use scoring to pre-populate the chart, or do it live with sticky notes.

It’s the simplest way to shift a conversation from opinions to patterns.

Jim Semick | 00:45:50–00:48:45
And then there’s the Buy-a-Feature method — a fantastic tool when you have:

• Internal stakeholders
• Cross-functional teams
• User groups
• Customer advisory boards

You give each group a “budget” and a set of proposed features with “prices.”
They literally buy what they value most.

This forces tradeoffs.
Suddenly everything is no longer “top priority.”

Stakeholders reveal what they really care about, and you see patterns that weren’t visible before.

It’s also fun — which makes hard conversations easier.

Don’t Compare Apples to Oysters: Fair Prioritization Categories

Tom Evans | 00:48:45–00:50:35
Here’s the mistake we all make at some point:
We try to compare completely different types of work against each other — bugs vs. features, tech debt vs. new revenue features, maintenance vs. innovation.

That’s comparing apples to oysters.
They don’t belong on the same prioritization list.

Instead, create separate workstreams:

• Customer issues & defects
• Technical debt
• Customer-value features
• Strategic initiatives
• Compliance & regulatory items

Once you separate them, you can assign percentages of team capacity to each stream.

For example:

• 20% to bugs
• 15% to tech debt
• 50% to customer-facing features
• 15% to strategic work

This prevents endless arguments about, “Why is this bug ranked lower than this feature?”
Because they are not the same kind of work.

Jim Semick | 00:50:35–00:52:20
Yes, and this also gives executives a reality check.
They often want 100% of the roadmap to be new features.
But the truth is:
Healthy products require maintenance, hygiene, and investment in the future.

Workstream allocation lets you say:
“We can absolutely deliver this, within the capacity allocated for this stream.”

It brings clarity.
It reduces emotion.
And it aligns expectations across engineering, sales, executives, and product.

Themes-Based Planning: A Strategic Shield for PMs

Jim Semick | 00:52:20–00:54:00
Themes-based planning is one of the most powerful tools in modern product management.

A theme is a big problem your team commits to solving in a given period.
Examples:

• “Reduce onboarding friction”
• “Improve trial-to-paid conversion”
• “Strengthen platform reliability”
• “Accelerate new user activation”

Themes let you say:
“We’re focused on this outcome this quarter.”

It prevents the roadmap from devolving into a wishlist of isolated features.
And it creates alignment across engineering, design, sales, execs—everyone.

Tom Evans | 00:54:00–00:56:10
Themes also protect your roadmap from random feature requests.
When someone asks, “Can we squeeze this in?” you can reply:

“Does it support this quarter’s theme?”

If not → it goes to the parking lot.
No debate needed.

Themes elevate roadmap conversations from “What features are we shipping?” to
“What outcomes are we creating?”

That is how strategic PMs operate.

Five Secrets Working Together: Your Prioritization Playbook

Tom Evans | 00:56:10–01:00:40
Okay, let’s bring everything together.
The five secrets aren’t steps — they are a system.

Here they are as a playbook:

1️⃣ Start with market context
— Customer pains, market trends, competitive landscape.

2️⃣ Align to your product strategy
— Your roadmap should make your strategy real.

3️⃣ Use a prioritization model
— Weighted scoring, RICE, Kano, quadrants—pick one and stick with it.

4️⃣ Create fair categories of work
— Bugs, features, tech debt, innovation all belong in different buckets.

5️⃣ Communicate in themes and outcomes
— This is how you build buy-in and avoid constant re-litigation.

When you apply all five, you:

• Reduce conflicts
• Speed up decision-making
• Improve clarity
• Increase stakeholder trust
• Deliver better products faster

Jim Semick | 01:00:40–01:06:40
And here’s the key takeaway from hundreds of product organizations we work with:

Prioritization is a leadership skill, not a math exercise.

The models help.
The frameworks help.
But ultimately, PMs succeed when they:

• Tell a compelling customer story
• Align work with strategy
• Show the “why” behind decisions
• Communicate tradeoffs transparently
• Build trust through consistency

When your roadmap tells a clear strategic story, people stop fighting it and start supporting it.

That’s when prioritization becomes empowering instead of exhausting.

Closing Remarks & Next Steps

Tom Evans | 01:06:40–01:08:20
Thank you all — this is one of the most important topics in product management because prioritization affects everything:
your team’s focus, your customer experience, and your company’s results.

Use the five secrets.
Share them with your team.
And remember: prioritization is a muscle — the more you use it, the stronger it gets.

Jim Semick | 01:08:20–01:10:00
Thanks everyone for being here.
We hope you experiment with these models and find the combination that works best for your product, your team, and your culture.

And as always — stay customer-obsessed, stay curious, and keep building products that matter.