The Art of Prioritization

Welcome & Opening

Ryan Cantwell | 00:00–01:15
All right, well hello and welcome everybody. I see our attendees list continues to grow, so we’re going to just take a quick moment, make sure everybody is inside our webinar, and we’ll go ahead and get started in just a short moment.

Okay, I think we can get started. So hello and welcome everybody. Good afternoon, good morning, or good evening from wherever you are calling in the world. I’m Ryan Cantwell, I’m a principal consultant and trainer with the 280 Group, and I cannot thank you enough for joining us today.

Our webinar today centers around the art of prioritization and building a roadmap that more — hopefully — inspires action than anything. And this is a topic I am sure many of you deal with every day.

Introducing the Speaker & 280 Group

Ryan Cantwell | 01:15–03:40
Next slide please, Sneha.

I am particularly excited to introduce to all of you Sneha Narahalli. She is the Vice President and Head of Product at Sephora. So Sneha, would you please introduce yourself?

As Ryan mentioned, this topic has been discussed many, many times across so many different locations online — there are courses, blogs, talks. What could you possibly learn here that you have not already seen?

And even if you slept through all of this presentation — I know it’s a Friday morning — what were some of the things that possibly I could share?

Just a quick introduction of the 280 Group if you are unfamiliar: it is our mission to empower product professionals with the knowledge and tools to build products that matter. Simply put, we’re product people with decades worth of real-world experience in the discipline. There is nothing we love more than sharing our passion for product through opportunities like this webinar, so thank you for being with us today.

Whether you need help as an individual growing your own knowledge and skills, or you’re working on improving your team’s effectiveness, we have the experience and services that will get you to that next level.

So check us out — I see we have included our link in the chat. We’d love for you to click through and even follow us on LinkedIn.

I do invite you, speaking of LinkedIn, to find us there. We have built a community of other like-minded product professionals so we can chat, we can share best practices and tips with all of you. You can access that group with the link in the chat box — look at that, it just appeared — and we’d love for you to give us a follow there and see a lot of the good things that we do.

During the webinar as we’re together today — and at the 280 Group — we do like interacting with you. So I encourage all of you to ask questions. Please use the Q&A box or the chat box that’s available to you at the bottom of your screen to type in questions at any time.

We will leave time at the end for Q&A. We will also be monitoring that throughout the presentation and may pick a couple of questions here and there throughout.

But I will say our most popular question, no matter what, is: “Can I watch this webinar later?” And the answer is: yes, of course you can. If you have registered, you will receive a link to view this webinar recording after it has ended.

Now let’s get started, and I will turn it over to Sneha.

About Sneha & Her Journey

Sneha Narahalli | 03:40–06:25
Thank you, Ryan.

I know you told me to mute all my notifications, but I can’t mute my dog who’s playing with his toy. So if you hear a few squeaky noises in the background, it’s my dog.

As Ryan introduced, today we are going to talk about the art of prioritization and why we’re here. Just a little bit more about my journey and why I’m here.

Both my parents were writers. I was an aspiring writer and poet until I realized that it doesn’t make as much money as being in technology.

I studied back in India, and then I came to the U.S. I came here to Carnegie Mellon and did my master’s at Carnegie Mellon.

After that I got into product management quite by accident. I was with Sears and was part of a rotational journey where we could actually go through several rotational programs like being in engineering, product management, and so on.

I tried my stint at product management and figured out that this is what I loved. Ever since then I’ve been with Sears, Walmart, and now Sephora — not intentionally, but I’ve been in retail for over a decade now.

Currently at Sephora I lead product management for the digital experiences, the data, as well as the marketing technology. I’m loving it here, love the culture, and I’m having fun at what I do.

Why This Topic & Sneha’s Perspective

Sneha Narahalli | 06:25–09:10
Why me?

As Ryan mentioned, this topic has been discussed many, many times across so many different locations, online, courses… What could you possibly learn here that you have not already seen?

And even if you slept through all of this presentation — it’s a Friday morning — what are some of the things that possibly I could share?

Personally, for me, over the decade I have come to think in terms of currency of time. Everything that I operate in — how I prioritize things, whether it’s personal or professional — I have this constant clock in the back of my head that’s thinking:

“Okay, is this worth my effort?”
“Is this worth my time?”
“Do I need to actually put some effort into this?”

I think I’ve fine-tuned the way that I operate to think in the currency of time. This was not something that has come easily and naturally to me.

I’ve struggled with it during my initial years. And not to say that I’m perfect at it right now — it’s definitely an ongoing journey. But I’ve also met some mentors along the way, spoken to them, and had some good conversations on the best practices they use.

And of course, prioritization is critical for any PM.

What I’ve seen really work is if we can do it in a simple and personalized way.

We talk about personalization of customer experiences and customer journeys, but the way you’re prioritizing products — if you can personalize that as well and put your product management hat on in the framework for prioritization — that drives the most value.

Each company operates in a very different way, and it’s hard to say that one formula is successful for all. So it’s kind of like adding the external variables and figuring out how you’re going to make the secret sauce of prioritization work for the environment that you’re in.

What Is Prioritization?

Sneha Narahalli | 09:10–11:50
So what is prioritization?

In a very simplistic way, the dictionary describes it as: to organize things so that the most important thing is done or dealt with first.

I think the foremost thing in bringing people along the prioritization journey is: don’t complicate it.

Make it simple to understand what it is that we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and why this needs to be done.

I’m going to spend the next couple of slides talking a little bit more about each of these words that we’re using in describing what prioritization is:

What does “organize things” mean?

What is “important” and why?

What does “dealt with first” mean?

When we say organizing things, I think it’s important for us to create a process of having an intake for all the things that come your way where you need to spend effort or time.

This could be:

Your existing asks

New asks that come in

Bugs and enhancements

Even process changes

I think some of us don’t think of process changes as something that needs to be prioritized. That’s when I go back to my thinking: anything where you need to spend time and effort needs to be prioritized, because it takes away your focus and attention that could have been spent on another task.

So process changes or improvements also come into this category, because you are kind of having everything that you need to work on in a single list and organized in a way that makes sense.

Being in product management, as you all know, it’s not just us sitting in a room and saying, “This is how we’re going to operate.” Most of our job is making sure everybody else in the company understands what is happening, that they are aligned, and it makes sense to them.

So how do you create a process that is leveraged by the company and your other stakeholders so that it makes sense?

Creating an Intake Process

Sneha Narahalli | 11:50–15:00
When you have this intake process that you establish, this is an example of what we currently use at Sephora.

We have a different methodology for intake for:

New ideas

Feature enhancements

Bugs

We also explain what a “new idea” means, what a “feature enhancement” means, and what a “bug” means — because the definition can be subjective based on who the audience is.

If it’s a brand-new idea, it will possibly have a larger level of effort and involve completely new development.

If it’s a feature enhancement, that is an improvement to an already existing feature.

If there’s an error or an issue — client-facing or internal — it goes through a different priority process, because that needs to be addressed first since your customers are being impacted by it.

What I’m showing is a screenshot of some of the things that we ask for users to fill in so that when we are prioritizing the asks or the enhancements, it makes sense to us and we are able to gauge why it’s important.

Again, this is just a snapshot — there are many other fields here. The intention is not to make it so cumbersome that you scare people away from entering requests, but to capture just enough information that we need to help understand the prioritization process.

Now that we have things organized, it’s also helpful to pick a common currency, so that you create an even playing field for the tasks that you need to spend your resources on.

You can’t have different currencies that you’re thinking of — it will be hard for you to evaluate what is more important than the other.

Choosing a Common Currency

Sneha Narahalli | 15:00–17:30
Yeah, and this is an interesting point. I love the image of comparing apples to hamburgers — sometimes it feels like that when we’re prioritizing, right?

And I would encourage everybody listening to find flexibility in your process and make sure that you are able to compare dissimilar things because it’s natural that that’s going to happen. We will need to do that as we prioritize.

Yes.

Again, what I’ve seen happen in the past when it’s hard to pick a common currency is that you naturally lean toward being more subjective than objective by saying, “It improves customer experience.”

Ultimately, yes, we want to make our customers’ lives easier — but that can’t be the excuse for everything that you do. Everything is about improving customer experience.

It’s really helpful for us to be deliberate and cognizant of what exactly we are measuring and how we are creating this common currency.

I’ll share a little bit more on how this can be done, because I do see a lot of people struggling with this — and I was one of those people struggling with this in the past.

When you’re thinking in terms of impact, there are different flavors of what you’re thinking of — whether it’s:

Incremental revenue

Savings

Efficiency

Strategic

Foundational

How do you convert all of this to a common currency?

That could be:

Dollars

Increase in sales

Market share

Or whatever the core goal of the company is

Even though we have different flavors of what “impact” means, we should identify a way of converting it into a common currency. I’ll share a bit more on how we do that in the upcoming slides.

What Currency Is Not & Where Ideas Come From

Sneha Narahalli | 17:30–20:00
One thing that we need to make sure this currency is not is: it’s not the loudest person or the highest-paid person in the room.

Oftentimes we fall prey to our CEO or our boss asking for certain things and prioritizing certain things just because, “I was told to do this,” or “someone said so.”

I’m sure when somebody says, “This needs to be done,” there’s reasoning behind it. It’s helpful to understand where that person is coming from, to get deeper details on why it’s important, rather than assuming and relying that the person has done all the due diligence.

Individually, we all bring so much to the table; it’s good to bring your point of view as well — irrespective of who the person is who’s asking for certain initiatives.

And ideas come from all sources, right?

If you look at this pie chart: insights come from customers, from employees, vendors, and partners.

When you have this intake process and you’re creating an even playing field, make sure that you’re being inclusive of all the ideas that you’re getting from different sources.

But ultimately, irrespective of where your ideas are coming from, they all go through the funnel that you have defined, so that it makes sense for you as a product manager to prioritize asks from different sources.

And I would put money on the idea that the employee insights that we get are driven from their knowledge of the customer, so that even increases the weight that insights from the customer have on us and influences the decisions we make in terms of priority.

For sure. And I think, adding to that, employees also know the inner workings of how the sausage is made — so it’s a less biased hack, maybe, unless you’re super biased yourself, in being able to articulate the ask.

So yes, we should make sure we are leveraging this resource of employees and using them for the ideas that we generate.

Thinking in Terms of Impact

Sneha Narahalli | 20:00–22:40
Here is an example of thinking in terms of impact.

“Improving customer experience” is great, but:

It’s improving customer experience because it will increase CLV

Which will then result in dollar amount

So keep asking the question:

“This will result in what?”

“This will result in this… which will result in this…”

…until it leads to your common currency.

If it’s not something that ultimately results in this, then that’s a conversation that we need to have.

A few examples:

Strategic importance tied to the vision, which will have long-term ROI, but with a defined period (e.g., 3–5 years). How does that extrapolate in terms of dollar amount? Can you then annualize that dollar amount so you’re still quantifying your strategic importance?

Efficiency in terms of labor savings, time savings, resulting in cost savings in dollars.

Here are some thought processes on how to convert KPIs to a common currency, so you can keep everything on an even playing field.

Some of the things we should be a little cognizant of not thinking of as “impact”:

“This has worked before.”

“This is an industry standard.”

“This is what everybody else is doing.”

“We were asked to do this.”

These conversations are good starting points — “This is an industry standard” is good — but then it helps to evaluate what the exact standard is, whether it makes sense for us at this point, and how you convert it into a dollar amount that makes sense.

Defining “Important” & Aligning to Vision

Sneha Narahalli | 22:40–26:30
Now that we have spent some time talking about organizing the things and creating an even playing field, how do you define “important”?

How do you make sure it aligns with your goals, and how do you make sure others who are part of this journey also feel that what we are working on as a team is important?

Today I have a question for you:

Does “important” also mean “urgent”, or are they two different things?

Urgent is a parameter in “important”, but it’s not a one-to-one mapping. “Important” does not mean “urgent.”

That’s where, when we’re defining the value of a feature that we’re building, we are also looking at speed to market — but you’re looking at speed to value.

Yes, it’s urgent for us to get this done. But urgent because why? Are we going to lose out on first-to-market advantage? Are we going to miss a time-sensitive opportunity?

Urgency is one parameter that will define importance, but it’s not the single one that defines it.

So how are you defining importance and making sure your features are aligning with the vision?

Here’s an example of what a vision statement could be:

“Build the largest, most trusted and cost-effective last-mile network capable of powering industry-leading propositions.”

The specific words that we’ve chosen here are measurable. Because when you have a list of things you need to work on, the importance of each can be measured if you know your goal and it is measurable.

If you just say, “Build the largest, most trusted,” and not explain what that means, it’s ambiguous. For me, “largest” could mean number one in the U.S. For Ryan, “largest” could mean something else. You’re already starting with a disconnect that will create a lot of churn.

Here, when we say this is our vision, you’re measuring it by:

Largest → local market share

Trusted → on-time delivery, CSAT, NPS, number of active drivers

Cost-effective → cost per delivery needs to be a certain number

And we think about how to achieve it in a high-level way.

Year 1: strengthen your foundation
Year 2: build volume
Year 3: be the primary provider for the company

So you’re achieving the vision through this three-year strategy.

The questions you need to ask yourself when intake requests come in:

Will it increase my market share?

Will it increase on-time delivery?

Will it reduce my cost of delivery?

This constant asking of questions creates an initial filter. If you know that none of these are being met, then maybe it’s not important now. Maybe it is important, but is it important now? Maybe not, because the goal you want to achieve right now is something else.

We had a question from the audience: “What does CSAT stand for?”

CSAT is Customer Satisfaction, and NPS is Net Promoter Score.

And I really love how you only picked three — those are three aligning principles, because too often I see people have way too many and it’s hard to focus. Was that deliberate?

Yes. This particular example is actually from my past life, not Sephora, but yes — when you pick a limited number, you’re already prioritizing what you want.

And again, three is not a magic standard, but through iterative discussion we landed on three as “just enough” to achieve, but with stretch.

And I’ll say again: just like we A/B test features, you can A/B test your process of prioritization. That’s how we landed on three here.

From Vision to Measurable Features

Sneha Narahalli | 26:30–30:10
Now that you have your vision, you’ve identified your KPIs and your three-year strategy — how do you build things that are measurable?

For example, if your goal is to be the cost-effective last-mile network — meaning you want to decrease your cost per delivery from $15 to $12 — you’ll have a list of features that might align with that goal:

Batching more orders in a trip

Increasing driver utilization by increasing relevancy of orders

Reducing call center costs (“Where is my order?”) by providing better self-service and visibility

You’ll get a lot of ideas that align with a particular goal. But how do you break it down so you can pick?

We all wish we lived in a world where we had endless money and resources and could do it all. Unfortunately we don’t.

So out of all those three, which one would you pick?

If we go down a level:

Batching more orders might reduce cost per delivery by $2

Increasing driver utilization might reduce it by $1

Reducing call center costs might reduce it by $0.50

You already have a prioritization framework for this set of features.

This helps you tell a story to stakeholders — engineering, UX, business — of why you recommend one over another.

Without these metrics, you’re basically saying, “I feel we should do batching orders because it makes sense,” and others are thinking, “Yes, we trust you, but we trust data more.”

So making your next-level features KPI-driven makes it easier to explain why you’re picking one over another.

The tough thing is quantifying strategy and foundation.

Sometimes “strategy” is an overrated label we put on things where we don’t have a KPI; we just call it “strategic” or “foundational”.

We need to be deliberate about quantifying those initiatives. A couple of ways:

Add “strategy” or “foundation” as a variable in your scoring. Could you score those too, and evaluate them alongside everything else?

Add value by extrapolating future impact and assume X% will be realized each year. E.g., building personalization is going to increase ROI by $50M; maybe 10% in year one, 25% in year two, the rest in year three.

You can always go back at the end of year one and see if that assumption made sense and course-correct. It doesn’t have to be perfect — it’s a framework so you can be accountable and adjust.

Some things are truly must-haves; they’re obvious. The minute a person asks, “Is this a must-have?” — it probably isn’t obvious.

Legal and compliance are similar:

If impacted, what is the possible cost this would cause, and by when?

If you’re getting sued, if there’s a breach — what’s the extreme cost to the company?

Convert those into a quantifiable number as well.

And if it’s mandatory by law, it goes straight to the top of the list.

Time to Market vs Time to Value

Sneha Narahalli | 30:10–32:30
Now we spoke about how to organize things and define what is important. How do we deal with “get it done” or “dealt with first”?

This is where we talk about time to value versus time to market.

When we say “dealt with first,” it does NOT mean “shipped first and we’re done.”

We’re not measuring only the time it takes to launch; we’re measuring the time it takes for:

Adoption

People actually using it

The value we hoped the feature would bring being realized

So it’s important to focus on time to value as opposed to just time to market.

Here is an example of an agility framework where we are driving value instead of just speed to market.

For our omni-channel journey, for example, we weren’t just releasing features; we were tracking the value they brought in terms of percentage of omni sales:

Reserve online, pickup in store

Curbside pickup

Same-day delivery

Same-day unlimited

We were measuring the value in terms of omni-channel sales share, not just how quickly we shipped those features.

Combining Prioritization Frameworks

Sneha Narahalli | 32:30–36:10
Now, bringing it all together is like having all your ingredients ready and putting them together to create this fabulous dish that everybody likes.

There are many prioritization frameworks:

MoSCoW (Must, Should, Could, Won’t)

RICE

WSJF

Scoring matrices

I’m not going to spend a lot of time teaching each framework; there’s great documentation out there. The key is to figure out what works best for you.

It also doesn’t mean you have to use only one. You could use a combination.

For example, we usually start with the MoSCoW priority:

Must-have

Should-have

Could-have

Will-not-have

Once you have your even playing field, your currency, your impact, you can create thresholds that say:

Must-have → ROI > $5M

Should-have → ROI between $3–5M

Could-have → ROI < $3M

Will-not-have → Below a certain threshold

You’re already creating a first-level prioritization.

Then you go to the next level, where you’re looking at:

Annualized benefit

Client reach

Business importance

Engineering effort

We would love to do something that gives an ROI of $60M, but if it takes three years to do, versus something else that takes six months, does it make sense?

So combining frameworks helps you build the prioritized list of features.

Most importantly — and I think this is very underrated — is telling the story of how we started and how we got to this list of prioritized features.

It’s critical to:

Explain the process

Involve everyone in the process

Not disappear into a room and come back with, “Ta-da, here’s the list!”

Bring every stakeholder into the journey and make room for feedback and improvement.

This is not one-and-done. Things will change. Pandemics will come. External factors will influence the process itself.

Mindset, People & Organization

Sneha Narahalli | 36:10–40:10
I’ve spent time talking about process, frameworks, and tools — but one of the key things I’ve seen that makes prioritization successful is people and mindset, and how the organization is structured.

Along with the obvious process work, it’s important to look at whether the organization is set up for the process.

From a product mindset perspective, you want to:

Let change drive innovation

Take a customer-centric approach versus being driven by organizational beliefs

Focus on time to value vs. time to market

Prioritize growth vs. perfection of product

Build sustainable teams vs. dispatching project teams over and over

I had a mentor once tell me, “Don’t let perfect get in the way of better,” and that has stuck with me — which sounds a lot like prioritizing growth over perfection.

Yes. Personally, outside of product management, this is a journey I’ve been on in the last couple of years. I used to have this mindset that I needed to get everything done perfectly, which stressed me out and created a lot of health issues.

Inherently, as human beings, we have to prioritize growth versus perfection in the things that we do.

Communication, Motivation & Agility

Sneha Narahalli | 40:10–44:10
Next is communication. Motivated people create more innovation.

So once you create this process and you’re seeing impact, how do you inform people of the impact of their contribution?

Everybody needs to be part of this journey and feel like they’ve made an impact.

As product managers, we’re often front-facing in these conversations, so it’s extremely important to:

Make sure we communicate the impact of every individual

Invest in personal and professional growth (certifications, mentorship)

Encourage trying new things and internal mobility

Incubate ideation and hackathons so people see their ideas come to life

Then, building agility.

There’s often confusion that “process” hinders agility. I constantly reiterate that streamlining things does not mean losing agility, and it does not mean going back to waterfall.

How do you transition to an agile process?

Maybe:

Year 1: Create an “express lane” — one stream of work, 2–3 week sprints, prioritized projects.

Year 2: More than one stream, still 2–3 week sprints, but aligned with project domains or KPIs.

Year 3: Move fully into a product delivery model: multiple outcome-driven streams with continuous improvements.

This is how the process becomes part of your DNA, not something you have to constantly re-sell.

Measuring Outcomes & Using Analytics

Sneha Narahalli | 44:10–48:00
How do you measure your outcome?

If you can’t measure, you probably shouldn’t invest in it.

That means:

Defining KPIs and measurements of success

Testing hypotheses with statistical measurement

Getting multi-directional feedback from customer support, ops, business partners

Doing technical validation via A/B testing and experimentation

Here is an example of our navigation design iterations:

10+ iterations per channel (web, app, etc.)

600+ client interviews

250+ hours of research

Ultimately, we were able to measure the design itself and saw a 1.4% uplift in conversion.

Even for design initiatives, we make sure we’re measuring outcomes.

We had a quick question about “organizational beliefs” I mentioned earlier.

When I talked about what not to treat as impact — “This is how it’s always been done,” “This is industry standard,” “This is what everyone else is doing” — those are organizational beliefs.

They’re useful as input for conversation, but not as a basis for prioritization.

We need to change the mindset that those statements alone are good enough.

Analytics for Where to Invest & Team Structure

Sneha Narahalli | 48:00–51:30
How do you decide where to invest using analytics?

There’s analytics after launch that tells you if something is KPI-driven and successful, but you also need analytics before to decide if something is worth working on.

Here’s an example from our product page insights:

Call-to-action CTR: 44%, conversion 12%

Swatch engagement CTR: 30%, but conversion 28%

So we know that engagement with swatches is something we want to invest in more because analytics tells us there’s a higher conversion there.

We then tested it, responsified the page, made some enhancements, and saw an uplift in RPV (revenue per visit) by 0.6%.

So we measure outcomes:

For projects we’ve already delivered

For things we’re considering investing in — so they feed into prioritization

Investing in teams is also critical.

Many companies used to work in a project team model, assembling people temporarily. Now, many are transitioning to pods, two-pizza teams, or outcome-based product teams.

Benefits:

Better cross-functional coordination

Reduced resource thrash

Increased focus on business outcomes

Increased ownership and empowerment

So how your teams are structured can help bring your prioritization framework to life in the most optimal way.

Knowing When to Discontinue & Measuring the Process

Sneha Narahalli | 51:30–55:00
Finally, figure out when you need to evaluate and discontinue.

Here are a couple of examples:

Virtual artist feature (2017–2020): we reaped the benefits we wanted, then discontinued it.

Voice search: still in the apps but not something we’re heavily investing in.

Live video chat: we tried it, then discontinued.

If you’re not seeing the results you want, make the hard decision of letting it go and reinvesting in things that make more sense.

In the end, if the framework and process are working, you should see a graph where:

Investment continues to remain the same or grow moderately

But outcome or revenue grows faster than in the old ways of working

It’s good to evaluate the process itself:

Is your prioritization system working?

For the investment you’re making, how much are you reaping?

Are you doing more with less?

If so, the new process is working.

Key Takeaways

Sneha Narahalli | 55:00–57:00
Finally, the key takeaways — even if you slept through the whole presentation or were multitasking on Instagram:

Define a framework customized to your ways of working.

Test and evaluate the framework itself with cross-functional feedback.

Be able to explain the process and outcomes in a logical way. If you can’t, it’s hard for people to come along on the journey.

Embrace constraints and don’t get stuck in beliefs like “this is industry standard” or “this is how it’s always been done.”

Thank you so much. That was the end of my presentation.

Q&A Session

Ryan Cantwell | 57:00–58:10
All right, yes — we can move right into Q&A. What a wonderful presentation, Sneha. Thank you.

The first question: on the outcome slide you were showing a bar graph with the acronym “MUSD.” What does that mean?

Sneha Narahalli | 58:10–59:00
It’s “millions in U.S. dollars.”

Ryan Cantwell | 59:00–01:00:20
Thank you.

Another question:

“If you cannot measure, then you probably shouldn’t work on it.” You said that, Sneha. How do you get senior leadership to believe that and bring them along?

Sneha Narahalli | 01:00:20–01:02:30
Unfortunately there is no easy answer.

What has helped me is asking a lot of “why” questions.

If I believe we should not do something because we can’t measure it, I want to hear the senior leadership’s point of view:

Why do they think the opposite makes sense?

What’s the reasoning behind the push?

If their answer is strong enough — not just to me, but to the broader team — then, sure, we might proceed.

Also, it depends on how flexible your senior leadership is in taking feedback.

Explaining your process — that if certain things are not measurable, you can’t allocate effort properly to everything — helps bring them along on why everything should be measurable.

Ryan Cantwell | 01:02:30–01:04:10
Another question:

“When we’re considering the flavor of Agile framework we are using, how do we align product management to that as we set priorities?”

Sneha Narahalli | 01:04:10–01:06:00
When you’re building the flavor of Agile for your organization, you’re already keeping in mind what role product management plays.

It shouldn’t be an afterthought.

That’s why I say: you’re not just “doing Scrum” or “doing SAFe” — you’re doing the [Your Company] version of Agile.

It depends on the maturity of your organization and what role product management plays there.

In some companies it’s more engineering-driven; in others it’s more product-driven. Your Agile flavor needs to match that context.

Ryan Cantwell | 01:06:00–01:07:50
We have another question:

“I often must balance technical debt with new product development. How can I compare something that does not create obvious customer value, like technical debt, with something that does, like new product development?”

Sneha Narahalli | 01:07:50–01:10:00
I think that falls into the bucket of efficiency.

Technical debt is usually tackled because:

The technology is outdated.

You won’t get support for it in the future.

It’s costing more to build features on top of it than it should.

So there is a “why” to technical debt.

You can express it in terms of:

Cost savings (“If we don’t fix this, it will cost X more per year to maintain.”)

Time savings (“What used to take 3 months to build will take 2 weeks after refactoring.”)

Risk reduction and stability.

So you can add numbers to technical debt as an efficiency play and bring it into the same currency as new feature development.

Closing Remarks

Ryan Cantwell | 01:10:00–01:12:00
If you want to learn more about the services the 280 Group offers — like customizing and even using prioritization frameworks to meet your specific needs — you can check out our flagship product, the Optimal Product Management training course.

Sneha, I cannot thank you enough for joining us today. This was fantastic — the information you shared is really awesome, and I can’t wait to try some of these techniques.

Sneha Narahalli | 01:12:00–01:13:00
Thank you so much, Ryan and Nicole, for having me. I hope I got to add some value.

Ryan Cantwell | 01:13:00–01:14:00
Thank you, everybody.