Main takeaways: - Why trade-offs are important? - Prioritization with and without data - Building your prioritization framework and handling the 'We were asked to..." problem

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Trade-Offs & Prioritization in PM
by Amazon Sr PM

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6. Trade-offs and Prioritization
in Product Management
Kalyan Banerjee
6

7. Trade-offs - Why are they important?
- Constraints: Resources, Timelines, Capabilities etc.
- Feasibility of implementation
- Priority (what is important vs. what is not)
Example: You are building a solution to reduce storage cost in a global Supply
Chain product which delivers goods from China to the US. You need to start a pilot
in 6-9 months. Your options are:
- Building an intermediate storage in China (where real estate is cheaper) but
requires complicated regulatory clearance
- Building a supplementary storage in US with old/remote warehouses
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8. Example: Storage cost reduction
You need to make a trade-off to decide which one is the best option.
If you may choose:
- Option 1, if you believe that there will be several of these intermediate storage
locations in the long-term and finding too many old/remote warehouses in the
US is difficult. Therefore, it is worth investing in the regulatory work even if it
takes longer. You’re likely to miss the 6-9 months timeline.
- Option 2, if you need to do a quick proof-of-concept and time is of the
essence. Also, you are not sure how big this product will go and therefore
investing in regulatory work upfront might not be worthwhile.
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9. Classic pitfall of trade-offs: 1-way Door/2-way Door
If you make an irreversible trade-off, you need to be doubly sure of your decision.
Example: A trading platform that caters to institutional clients needs to make a
decision if they should keep investing in both mobile and web channels as
maintaining feature parity across both is expensive. They identify that more than
95% of their trades come from the web channel.
They put the mobile app on path to deprecation and invest all resources in
web-based development. In the next 3 months, there are no impact on trades.
But...
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10. Example: Trading platform deprecating mobile app
Gradually it becomes difficult to onboard new clients. Existing clients start moving
to competitor products.
Why?
- The executives of the institutional traders used the app to monitor trades in
real time - they never executed the trade but were critical to decision-making
- The new clients look at mobile as a critical channel to run business
- Overseas traders in most Asian countries prefer mobile over desktop
Bringing back the mobile app will take higher investments and will require earning
the trust of their clients all over again.
10

11. Prioritization and Trade-offs
Trade-off is essentially a prioritization exercise where you choose the higher
priority item over the lower priority one, which you possibly discard
In reality, you may or may not always have data to prioritize and make trade-offs
Example: You are enhancing features of a blogging site and have 3 requests:
1. Grammar check
2. Photo editing
3. Multiple language support
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12. Example: Feature enhancements of a blogging site
This is where you can probably use data for the trade-off.
You can get data from one or many of the following:
- Blogger survey
- Secondary market research
- Competitor analysis
- Resource availability
Most of these data-points should be available for you to make an informed
decision. Also, most of these are two-way doors.
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13. Prioritization and Trade-offs without Data
Two common mechanisms to trade off without data are:
1. High Business Judgement
2. Customer Anecdotes
Example: You are building public APIs for a shipping company that handles
overseas freight. Your UI has several features, such as, new booking, freight
tracking, insurance purchase, list of ongoing freight movements etc.
Which feature(s) will you choose for building your pilot APIs?
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14. Example: Building pilot APIs for a shipping company
You may not have all the data to make the trade-off because
- Your existing Customers may not be the target market for APIs
- Your potential Customers may not be easy to survey
- Not too many competitors may have APIs
- You can’t necessarily go with the highest used UI features
You are required to use your business judgement to decide
For example, you may have to decide on potential target market in 1-2 year
horizon, identify some early adopters on-board and then decide
14

15. Trade-offs using Customer Anecdotes
It is not easy for a Customer to articulate exactly what they need
Example: You are building a self-service registration (SSR) portal for an Online
Gaming company. You survey 50 gamers from your target market.
- Most of them say, they don’t want personalization info as a part of SSR
- Most of them also say, personalization is critical for the gaming experience
As a PM, you need to decide how much to ask at SSR so that
- The process is not too cumbersome upfront
- The gamer has some sense of personalization from the beginning
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16. The “We were asked to…” problem
Most trade-offs happen because of Leadership asks
As PMs, we need to push for the ‘Why’. Don’t hesitate to ask and push back
Trade-offs may have long-winding repercussions on your Product strategy and
may even impact your career!
“Trade-offs have been with us ever since the late unpleasantness in the Garden of
Eden.”
- Thomas Sowell, American Economist
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17. Thank You!!
Contact:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kalyansovan/
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