PEMDAS for Product Management: How to Rigorously Prioritize and Make Valuable Strategic Decisions
Why you should read this blog post: Are you a product professional trying to determine what to build next? After decades of experience across a variety of industries, we’ve created PEMDAS for prioritization to help product professionals make valuable strategic decisions driven by goals, business value, data, user feedback, and strategic alignment.
“Build me a digital donkey with $5 million in Bitcoin strapped to it!”
…is my new response to client software teams when they say, “We can build anything!”
Prioritization is an ever-evolving formula product managers constantly refine to determine what to build next. A formula that takes goals, user empathy, business value, strategic alignment, data, and the thoughts (and prayers) of each functional role in a company into account to try to 10x the value of a roadmap. With all of that information to consider, I could really use something like our fifth-grade math teacher’s favorite acronym, PEMDAS, to keep it all straight.
The software opportunity space is indeed (nearly) infinite. With enough time, capital, and creativity, we could probably build the aforementioned donkey with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin all strapped to it.
But why would the crypto donkey ever get prioritized? If we’re building a funeral home technology platform, how does the crypto donkey help connect users with organizations that will plant trees in memory of their loved ones?
It won’t. But what will? And how do we figure out what that is?
Enter stage left: Rigorous Prioritization!
At Crafted, our Rigorous Prioritization methods are like PEMDAS for prioritizing work.
We’ve been in many roadmap meetings when a crypto donkey has been pitched. How do we collaborate with clients to decide what gets prioritized? How do we reduce the HIPPO (highest paid person’s opinion) effect? In an opportunity space that is (nearly) infinite, how do we pick one thing to do?
We start with PEMDAS for Product Management.
Crafted Framework: PEMDAS for Product Management
(P)EMDAS: Principles
When prioritizing, there are a few paramount, non-negotiable principles:
Set goals
A critical step in figuring out what to prioritize is figuring out where you want to go. See the (EM) section below for Crafted’s favorite goal-setting methodologies.
Empathize with your users
Understand what it means to walk a day in the user’s shoes and then (metaphorically) wear their shoes as you prioritize.
Create empathy maps to understand what a user says, does, thinks, and feels.
Define business value
Create or revisit your business model and clearly define what makes your business more valuable and impactful.
For SaaS, think MRR. For a non-profit, think families fed.
These will most likely be lagging indicators (measuring outputs that have already happened).
Align strategically
Identify leading indicators (data that helps anticipate future performance) that drive your business model and use them to prioritize opportunities.
These should be metrics that your teams can directly impact and measure.
For SaaS, think DAU (daily active users). For a non-profit, think food cans donated/received.
Gather data
If you’re not using quantitative and qualitative data to inform your prioritization, you’re doing it wrong.
We recommend Pendo as a product analytics tool and their Product Analytics online course (Crafted’s product management team is certified in it).
Factor in the thoughts (and prayers) of cross-functional teammates
If we created a word map of Crafted’s blog, the largest word would be collaboration. It’s the cornerstone of successful initiatives.
The Crafted team has written about the importance of Stakeholder Alignment, Radical Candor, and prioritizing the Product Design function/role, among many other collaboration topics such as The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
TLDR: Listen to teammates and actively seek their feedback.
P(EM)DAS: Execution Methodologies
Rivaling the software opportunity space in depth is the Rolodex of prioritization methodologies. The Crafted team, having built software in many industries across companies in varying stages of their growth journey, has battle-proven prioritization methodologies we call on each time difficult decisions need to be made. We have led the following exercises to prioritize opportunities and drive alignment.
Define OKRs (Objectives & Key Results)
OKRs are everything you need in a goal-setting framework: they’re aspirational, specific, measurable, and time-based.
There are many resources available for writing OKRs. We like Jeff Gothelf’s Objectives & Key Results online course (Crafted’s product management team is certified in it).
Keep it simple: map opportunities to a good ol’ 2x2
Prioritization discussions are HARD. Why use a more complex framework if it’s not necessary?
Toss “Value” on the Y axis and “Effort” on the X axis. Place your opportunities on the matrix and lead a thoughtful discussion with teammates about why each opportunity is where it is.
Say no to arbitrary two-week planning cycles, lean on Kanban and consistent alignment to deliver
Crafted’s goal is to ensure the team is working on the highest priority initiative at any given moment.
There are ways to do that without an arbitrary two-week planning cadence.
Utilize Kanban to:
Create focus & drive efficiency by limiting work-in-progress.
Ensure the highest value work is always prioritized with one to-do column, updated regularly.
2x2 Prioritization Matrix
PEM(D)AS: Different approaches to consider
The Crafted team’s experience led us to our favorite prioritization methodologies, but we recognize they don’t apply to every use case. The team always considers a few different approaches if OKRs, a 2x2, and Kanban aren’t serving our needs.
Story mapping
Jeff Patton provides the resources for everything story mapping.
Crafted likes Story Mapping to align around the true user journey and prioritize sections to build on, or improve, the experience.
Simple goals & anti-goals
Write SMART goals to set the direction.
Document anti-goals to ensure we stay on the right path.
Risks & mitigations
Ask “what are the possible risks to our approach,” map them on a 2x2 of Risk vs Level-of-Validation, and stack-rank mitigations to those risks.
PEMD(AS): Ask for feedback
Have I stretched my use of the PEMDAS metaphor too far? Maybe. But I’m open to feedback! 😬
Software teams need to constantly seek feedback. If we don’t, we can get caught in overconfidence cycles. Brené Brown (a researcher who's spent two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy) wrote a review of Adam Grant’s book Think Again that summarizes the overconfidence cycle well:
“Yes, learning requires focus. But, unlearning and relearning requires much more–it requires choosing courage over comfort.”
At Crafted, we offer free Collaboration Hours (interest form here) where we’ll set up a room (or virtual space) to collaborate on the opportunity and problem space together. I call on anyone reading this post to choose courage and ask for feedback on their roadmap! Ask for feedback on their top priorities! Crafted’s fresh perspective, decades of experience in a variety of industries, and PEMDAS for prioritization approach might just be the perfect partner to 10x the ROI of any given roadmap.
