Here's how you can handle conflicts between different product priorities as a product manager.
As a product manager, you're often at the crossroads of various product priorities, each vying for attention and resources. Handling these conflicts is crucial to maintaining a balanced and effective product roadmap. It requires a combination of strategic thinking, clear communication, and a deep understanding of your product's vision and user needs. The ability to navigate these challenges not only ensures the successful evolution of your product but also maintains harmony within your team.
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shekhar chavdaProduct @TSS Consultancy | Product Management | Python | SQL | Tableau | Excel |
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Karen RebelloGlobal IT Leader | Board Member | Product and Strategy Advisor | IT Director | Digital Transformation Leader |…
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Giuliette BortolettoProduct Manager at Bradesco | Product Owner | ICP-APO | Yellow Belt LSS
When faced with conflicting priorities, the first step is to evaluate and prioritize the needs of your stakeholders, including customers, team members, and the business itself. This involves understanding the impact of each priority on the overall product strategy and user satisfaction. It's essential to consider the long-term vision of the product while also addressing immediate concerns that could significantly affect user experience or revenue.
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shekhar chavda
Product @TSS Consultancy | Product Management | Python | SQL | Tableau | Excel |
To properly prioritize, a balanced approach necessitates knowing stakeholders' demands and establishing open communication. Teams can resolve disputes and accomplish great results by coming up with a clear prioritizing structure based on data-driven insights and shared goals.
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Karen Rebello
Global IT Leader | Board Member | Product and Strategy Advisor | IT Director | Digital Transformation Leader | Portfolio, Program & Project Management
The RICE scoring model is an effective technique for prioritization in product management. RICE stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. By evaluating each project or feature based on these four criteria, teams can make more informed decisions. Reach measures how many people the project will affect, Impact assesses the potential benefit, Confidence reflects the certainty of the estimates, and Effort gauges the resources required. This systematic approach helps prioritize initiatives that maximize value and efficiency, ensuring that the most beneficial projects are tackled first.
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Aashish Sinha
Product Management Leader | 19 Years in Digital Transformation & E-commerce | Blockchain & Omnichannel Strategist | Author | Driving Business Growth
Understanding the rationale behind each priority and its impact on overall goals is essential. Facilitate open discussions with involved parties to identify common objectives and areas of compromise. Rely on data-driven insights to support decision-making, ensuring choices are based on objective criteria. Establish a transparent prioritization framework that everyone agrees on, and regularly revisit and adjust priorities as new information emerges. By fostering collaboration and maintaining flexibility, conflicts can be navigated effectively, keeping the team aligned towards achieving the best possible outcomes.
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Giuliette Bortoletto
Product Manager at Bradesco | Product Owner | ICP-APO | Yellow Belt LSS
E vamos combinar, gerenciar essas prioridades é quase como ser um malabarista em um circo! O segredo está em ouvir todo mundo, alinhar expectativas e usar ferramentas como Kanban ou a boa e velha lista de tarefas. E lembre-se: flexibilidade é a chave! Ajuste conforme necessário e não esqueça de tirar um tempinho para você – até os super-heróis precisam de uma pausa.
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Chiragsovi S V
Product,Investment and growth consulting for STARTUPS. Experience in Fintech, Construction-tech, Edtech and Blockchain
Data data data, there is no other way we can prioritise. Quantitative and qualitative data have to be evaluated and models like RICE, Moscow can be used to prioritise. I do believe in publishing the same to the internal stakeholders with clear indication of why one was chosen over the other.
Achieving stakeholder alignment is key in resolving priority conflicts. This means engaging with everyone who has a stake in the product's success—be it sales, marketing, customer support, or engineering—to understand their perspectives and constraints. Through effective communication, you can foster a shared understanding of the product goals and how each priority aligns with them.
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Giuliette Bortoletto
Product Manager at Bradesco | Product Owner | ICP-APO | Yellow Belt LSS
E, convenhamos, reunir todo mundo na mesma página pode parecer um pouco como reunir gatos, né? Mas com uma boa dose de comunicação e uma pitada de empatia, tudo fica mais fácil. Não tenha medo de organizar reuniões rápidas, tornar o ambiente mais descontraído e, claro, celebrar pequenas vitórias juntos. Afinal, um time alinhado e bem-humorado faz toda a diferença!
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Mohamad Tabbara
Lead Product Strategy | Product Head | Agile Facilitator | Startup Consultant | Experienced Entrepreneur and Founder of Three Former Startups.
Regular meetings with each department to discuss their priorities and concerns. Through effective communication, we fostered a shared understanding of product goals and how each priority aligned with them. This collaborative approach helped balance conflicting priorities and ensured that everyone worked towards common objectives.
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shekhar chavda
Product @TSS Consultancy | Product Management | Python | SQL | Tableau | Excel |
Stakeholder alignment is critical to resolving priority conflicts. Engage with all stakeholders to better understand their viewpoints and restrictions. Communicate clearly about product goals and how priorities fit into them. Seek common ground, make adjustments, and document agreements to maintain clarity and alignment across time.
Making data-driven decisions can help mitigate conflicts between product priorities. Use metrics and user feedback to objectively assess the value and urgency of each feature or improvement. This evidence-based approach ensures that you're not just relying on intuition or the loudest voice in the room but making choices that are backed by real user needs and business impact.
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Giuliette Bortoletto
Product Manager at Bradesco | Product Owner | ICP-APO | Yellow Belt LSS
E vamos combinar, nada melhor do que deixar os dados falarem por si, né? Assim, você evita aquelas discussões intermináveis e decisões baseadas no "achismo". E sabe o que é mais legal? Usar os dados para justificar suas escolhas faz você parecer um verdadeiro mago da produtividade. Então, bora analisar aqueles gráficos, ouvir o que os usuários têm a dizer e tomar decisões certeiras. Afinal, a matemática nunca mente!
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Sudish S.
Innovative Product Leader | Driving Growth and AI/ML-powered solutions in e-commerce and subscription services | Passionate about customer-centric Product Development
Oftentimes, PMs tend to look at quantitative data because it's often readily available and ignore qualitative feedback (such as customer anecdotes, feedback from customer surveys and usability studies, content feedback, customer support call transcripts, etc.). Data-driven decisions come in all forms and it simply alludes to gathering all sorts of varied information on the priorities and making an informed decision based on it. As PMs, you have to strike a good balance between gathering enough data to make an informed decision vs. waiting to gather every bit of information, which often leads to diminishing returns. The 80/20 rule is perfect here - 80% of your insights will come from 20% of the data sources you have access to.
Maintaining transparency in your product roadmap is essential for managing expectations and reducing conflicts. Clearly communicate the rationale behind priority decisions and how they fit into the overall product strategy. This transparency helps stakeholders understand why certain priorities are deferred and ensures that everyone is on the same page regarding the product direction.
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Mohamad Tabbara
Lead Product Strategy | Product Head | Agile Facilitator | Startup Consultant | Experienced Entrepreneur and Founder of Three Former Startups.
Share the Big Picture: Update stakeholders on the overall product strategy and long-term vision. Communicate Rationale: Explain the reasons behind priority decisions using data and feedback. Hold Regular Updates: Schedule consistent meetings or send updates to discuss changes and answer questions. Provide Visual Roadmaps: Use visual tools to help stakeholders understand timelines and priorities. Encourage Feedback: Allow stakeholders to voice concerns and use their input to refine priorities. Document Decisions: Keep a record of all priority decisions and reasoning.
When conflicts arise, it's important to have a structured approach to resolution. Facilitate discussions that allow all parties to voice their concerns and contribute to finding a solution. Focus on finding common ground and be willing to make trade-offs that serve the best interest of the product and users. A collaborative approach to conflict resolution can lead to innovative solutions that might have been overlooked otherwise.
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Priyansh S.
Conflicts often arise during different stages of the product life cycle and it is better to have conflicts than to make a product without a unanimous decision. PMs should be the absolute best at conflict resolution and here are several things they can practice : 1. open and effective communication - encourage team members and stakeholders to voice their opinions for better clarity on the conflict. 2. mutual understanding - understand the pain points that the team members are facing and try to brainstorm solutions that cater to those problems 3. Accepting tradeoffs - when conflicts arise, tradeoffs have to be made for a unanimous decision keeping the business goal in mind.
Finally, view every conflict as a learning opportunity. Reflect on what caused the priority clash and how it was resolved. Use these insights to refine your decision-making process and prevent similar issues in the future. Continuous learning helps you become more adept at handling conflicts and strengthens your skills as a product manager.
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Priyansh S.
Take a step back. Analyzing the root cause of the conflict is important. This ensures that the same thing doesn't happen again. There are several things you can do as a PM for this : 1. Talk to team members about the approach to problem-solving and product development. Any loopholes should be noticed then and there. 2. Talk to the stakeholders about what could've been improved in the communication for business goal alignment. 3. Reflect on your team members. Be open to and for constructive feedback that improves the overall team efficiency and performance. 4. Read and explore other practices done by organizations of your size for an effective product development lifecycle and resolving conflicts.
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