Everyone Has Ideas… What’s the Plan?
One of the hardest things about product development isn’t designing the machine. It’s deciding which machine, update, or program should actually come next.
Should you focus on the model that’s ten years old and starting to look its age?
Or the one where sales says you’re losing deals over a missing feature?
Or the new idea marketing brought back from that last customer event?
They all matter. But not equally. And if you’re picking priorities based on the last loud conversation or who’s furthest behind on their revenue goals, you’re not leading a product roadmap. You’re reacting to one.
That’s where a repeatable prioritization process makes all the difference.
When you have a clear, structured method for evaluating and selecting what comes next, a few good things happen at once.
First, stakeholders stop arguing about what the list should be and start focusing on what the list means. You spend less time justifying your decisions and more time preparing the team to deliver on them.
Second—and this is the part people underestimate—it gives your internal team clarity. Clear priorities give teams a shared target to rally around. When everyone knows what the most important project is, it’s easier to say no to distractions. Energy doesn’t get split across six half-baked projects. It gets focused on the one that matters most.
Want to see how this plays out? Try this at your desk:
On a blank sheet of paper, make a table with three columns.
The first column will be for letters: A - L.
The second column will be for numbers: 1 - 12.
The third column will be for numerals: i - xii.
Now try filling them in three different ways, and time yourself each round.
Attempt 1: Fill out the table row by row
A 1 i, then B 2 ii, then C 3 iii, and so on
Attempt 2: Fill out half of each column at a time
A B C … F, then 1 2 3 … 6, then i ii iii … vi, then G H I … L, then 7 8 9 … 12, then vii viii ix … xii
Attempt 3: Do one full column at a time
A B C … L, then 1 2 3 … 12, then i ii iii … xii
Which attempt was the fastest? Which felt the most efficient? Which made you feel like you were bouncing all over the place?
Now imagine this was a race against your competition to get new market share.
Which method would you want your team using? Which would you hope your competitors were stuck with?
A prioritization process works the same way. It lets your team line up their effort instead of scattering it. It gets the most important work done first. And it gives you a repeatable system to make better bets, with less waste. The result of that process is a roadmap. It is a document that is meant to be seen by all the active players so that each department, each person, knows what is up first, what is coming next, and what is not coming for a while.
At iron echos, we help teams build that kind of clarity into their product planning—from process design to project scoring to roadmap communication.
Because the hardest part of the race isn't always speed. Sometimes it's picking the right lane to run in.
Want help building a better process to prioritize your work?
Reach out and let’s get your team pulling in the same direction.