Prioritizing Client Projects Based on Impact

How I Prioritize as a Program Manager at Amazon One of the toughest parts of being a program manager is deciding what gets attention when everything feels important. At Amazon, where the pace is fast and the stakes are high, I’ve learned that effective prioritization isn’t just a skill—it’s a necessity. Here are three approaches that help me stay focused and move the needle: 1️⃣ Impact vs. Effort Matrix When juggling multiple projects, I map tasks based on how much impact they’ll have versus how much effort they’ll take. High-impact, low-effort items? Those are no-brainers. Low-impact, high-effort tasks? They often end up on the backlog or get re-evaluated. This simple framework keeps me and my teams working smarter. 2️⃣ Customer Obsession At Amazon, the customer always comes first. Before prioritizing, I ask myself: How will this improve the customer experience? If an idea doesn’t bring clear value to the customer, it’s either deprioritized or reconsidered. It’s a principle that keeps us grounded in what really matters. 3️⃣ Time for Big-Picture Thinking Amid the daily fire drills, it’s easy to let long-term planning slip. I’ve started blocking time on my calendar specifically for strategic thinking. This helps me step back, focus on the bigger picture, and ensure we’re not just putting out fires but also building for the future. Prioritization is messy, and it’s not always perfect. But these methods have helped me find clarity in the chaos and deliver meaningful results. How do you decide what deserves your attention when everything feels important? #Leadership #Prioritization #CustomerObsessed #ProgramManagement

I've managed 5 high-performing product marketing teams at startups and public companies, and there are 2 commonalities I've noticed at each: 1) it's easy for PMMs to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tasks on their plates, and 2) teams are rarely recognized for their true effort or impact by upper management. That's why I want to share my prioritization matrix 👇 It’s been a game-changer in how my teams approach projects and focus on what truly drives results. I’m curious—does this framework resonate with your approach to prioritizing tasks? Here's the concept: Rack up the wins by focusing on projects that offer high visibility and impact for lower effort and avoid those that drain your energy and don’t align with company goals. (Note: you could replace visibility with impact on this scale, but it's important that what you're working on is actually on the radar of those in upper management). Here’s how to prioritize: Quick Wins: These are the golden opportunities! High visibility, low difficulty — they bring great returns with minimal effort. Look for ways to get a few of these in your quarter. Strategic Initiatives: Aim for ONE strategic initiative per quarter. These are high-visibility, high-difficulty tasks that are aligned with your long-term goals. Go deep, plan ahead, and focus on the impact. You will be the most proud of these, but you need to be realistic about them. Routine Tasks: You’ve got to keep up with these, but don't let them consume too much of your time. Find a system to manage them efficiently. Avoid: Stay clear of high-difficulty, low-visibility tasks. These projects often don't yield the results you need, and they’re energy-draining. They don't align with your values or long-term success. 💡 Action Step: Review your current or upcoming projects. Classify them into high or low reward, and high or low effort. What projects are you spending too much time on that aren’t worth the effort? Time to realign and focus on what truly matters! #Productivity #TimeManagement #Prioritization #WorkSmart #StrategicFocus #CareerGrowth #Leadership How do you manage your / your team’s workload?

CEOs and CMOs constantly ask us where to prioritize their marketing efforts. Here’s what we tell them: Marketing is a math problem. Everything we do can be boiled down to hard numbers. And if your agency tells you it's not possible... my advice: Check their work... and then start with the driver tree. The driver tree translates marketing efforts into the math that drives revenue and EBITDA. Understanding how your marketing translates into incremental financial impact is critical to: - prioritizing,  - building conviction for a marketing tactic or strategy,  - and projecting performance. We start with a basic equation: Traffic to the website x average order/contract value x conversion rate This creates our foundation. From here: - We build the full driver tree across the business - We layer it over the P&L today - We examine which marketing initiatives drive how much revenue - We identify where they are today versus where they want to be - We calculate the Delta - what would have to be true to get from here to there Then we build growth scenarios bridging that gap. We ask what would have to be true to get you from where you are today... to where you need to be. And the driver tree clearly lays out pathways to get us there - whether it's: - lighting up a new channel and improving CRO,  - OR focusing on pricing and average contract value. We list all marketing tactics within those scenarios and size them to understand potential impact. Everything connects back to the driver tree laid over the P&L, breaking it into actionable math. For prioritization, we use a two-by-two matrix measuring: • Impact • Effort • Size of initiative This reveals which initiatives will move the needle the most, the fastest, with the least effort. Sometimes we recommend prioritizing these "quick wins," while others we focus on the longer-term, but bigger strategic initiatives. There's no silver bullet that's the answer every single time. But stop chasing tactics. Start with math.

8-Step Project Scoring System (Use this before saying “yes”) Too many project managers take on every project that lands on their desk. Then they wonder why they’re: Burned out Buried in chaos Missing deadlines Managing low-impact work Here’s a better way: Score it first. Before committing, run each opportunity through this 8-step Project Scoring System: 1. Strategic Alignment: Does this project directly support key business objectives? 2. Executive Sponsorship: Is there visible and committed support from leadership? 3. Resource Readiness: Do we have the right people and tools available? 4. Risk Profile: What’s the level of uncertainty or exposure? 5. Stakeholder Engagement: Are the right people involved—and actively participating? 6. ROI Potential: Will this deliver measurable value (not just “busy work”)? 7. Timeline Realism: Are the deadlines achievable—or pure fantasy? 8. Team Capacity: Can we do this well without sacrificing other priorities? Score each from 1 (low) to 5 (high). 30+ points: Go for it. High-value and feasible. 20–29 points: Proceed with caution. Get clarity. Below 20: Decline or defer. The cost may outweigh the benefit. I’ve used this system to prioritize high-impact work, build trust with leadership, and protect my team from burnout. It’s not about doing more. It’s about doing what matters most. Would you use a system like this before saying “yes”?

Prioritizing a quick win is tempting.  But do they really drive your product forward? Recently, I was faced with prioritizing two features: One was an empty state screen—a low-effort, easy win for engineers. The other was the initial step for a more robust, impactful feature. The improved empty state screen would wrap up nicely with other tickets planned for that sprint. The second feature, however, required more groundwork and higher effort. Though tempted by the quick win, I ultimately chose the latter. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁. The first option, while quick and easy, would have minimal influence on our goals. Releasing features for the sake of “shipping” can easily turn a team into a “feature factory.” The second option, though harder to build, aligned more closely with our success metrics. By prioritizing high-impact features early, we get closer to our goals faster than if we shipped a series of smaller, low-impact updates. A popular prioritization framework I use is 𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗘: • 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵: How many users will this feature impact? • 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁: How much will this feature drive us toward our success metrics? • 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲: What is the likelihood that this feature will yield the expected results? • 𝗘𝗳𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘁: Assessed by engineers, this reflects the complexity of building the feature. In my case, the empty state screen scored low in reach and impact, only affecting a small subset of users with minimal influence on key metrics. Meanwhile, the robust feature had high reach, high impact, and high confidence, making the extra effort worthwhile. Remember, product success isn’t about how many features you ship; it’s about the impact those features create.

If you’ve ever been in a marketing brainstorm, you know the problem isn’t coming up with ideas; it’s deciding which ones actually to do. At Scout Digital, our discovery process often generates 100+ potential experiments for a client. But only 2–3 will actually change the revenue line. Here’s the framework we use to cut the noise: 1. Impact First (Revenue > Vanity) We don’t chase clicks or likes. Every idea gets scored against hard metrics—sales, conversion rate, profitability. Example: For Culture Partners, we prioritized conversion-path testing over top-of-funnel content. That focus generated $5.8 million in new revenue. 2. Effort vs Reward We use an “Impact / Effort” lens. Low-effort, high-impact experiments rise to the top; high-effort, low-impact get parked. Example: Nalgene’s AOV doubled just by restructuring checkout upsells—a low-effort, high-reward test. 3. Data, Not Gut Gut feel is a weak compass. Heatmaps, session replays, and customer interviews reveal where the actual friction lies. Example: Pennycake’s site redesign was driven by user-behavior data, resulting in an 8× conversion lift. 4. Strategic Alignment Ideas must align with the broader strategy. Random tactics don’t scale. If the brand goal is retention, we prioritize lifecycle email tests over flashy new acquisition channels. 👉 Out of 100 ideas, only 3–5 per quarter will move the needle. The art is in ruthless prioritization: choosing clarity over chaos. Question: How do you prioritize your backlog—gut, data, or an impact/effort matrix?

📌 How to do Prioritization as a Product Manager. Product Managers face a problem of plenty. You have so many things to do, many problems, many solutions, and many suggestions, but are always limited by time, bandwidth, and resources. Now you need to obsessively prioritize and filter ideas before you put them in the roadmap. But how do you prioritize? The simplest yet most powerful framework that most PMs rely on is the Impact v/s Effort Framework. The impact is determined by: - Potential revenue estimate, - Customer value, - Alignment with company goals, - Demand from the market, or - Any other relevant metrics that align with product goals. Impact estimation is mostly the responsibility of the product manager. The effort is determined by: - Development complexity, - Engineering efforts, - The time required & cost, - Operations complexity, etc. Effort estimation is mostly done by the delivery teams like engineers, design, ops, etc. This is a collaborative exercise. The next step is to visualize this through an impact v/s effort matrix. Provided that the estimations are done correctly, the low efforts & high impact items are picked at the earliest, & other things are prioritized in a logical order. 📌 3 Tips to take your prioritization game to the next level: 1. Consider tradeoffs at every step: Some high efforts ideas could be of high strategic importance, similarly some low-impact ideas could be critical for customer experience. Understand the situation from all angles. 2. Look out for red flags: All ideas look high impact, or the backlog is completely filled with low effort low impact ideas. This indicates either the PM is not competent at impact estimation or is not considering enough ideas during product discovery before deciding on the best one. 3. Validate high-effort ideas by first converting them into low efforts experiments. For example: Rather than converting your whole website into all Indian languages, try to convert the most popular pages into 3 popular languages, observe the results and then decide to roll back or go all in. 📌 Other frameworks for prioritization: There will be times when you'll need more detailed frameworks to prioritize, some of the other helpful frameworks are: 1. KANO: Puts customer satisfaction at the center and distinguishes between basic expectations, performance attributes, and delighters. 2. MOSCOW: categorizes requirements into four priority levels: Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won't have. 3. RICE: adds to more dimensions of Reach and Confidence to make Impact v/s Effort more reliable and exhaustive. ✨ Prioritization is a supercritical and useful skill for product managers, during their work, stakeholder management, and also during interviews. Do you think this would be helpful for you? I share helpful insights for product managers almost every day, consider connecting here 👉🏽 Ankit Shukla to not miss out. #productmanagement #prioritization

As Product Managers it’s so easy to loose trust if features on the roadmap are not prioritised correctly. Here are 5 prioritization frameworks and when to actually use them: 1. RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) ✅ Use when: You have multiple ideas/features and want to prioritize based on expected impact. 📌 Best for: Growth experiments, new features, MVP ideas 💡Tip: Confidence % is often biased calibrate with data! 2. MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won’t have) ✅ Use when: You’re working with tight deadlines and multiple stakeholders. 📌 Best for: Sprint planning, product launches 💡Tip: Don’t let every stakeholder label everything as “Must have.” 3. Kano Model ✅ Use when: You want to balance delight with functionality. 📌 Best for: Customer-facing products 💡Tip: A feature that delights today might be expected tomorrow. 4. ICE (Impact, Confidence, Ease) ✅ Use when: You want a quicker version of RICE for fast decision-making. 📌 Best for: Rapid prototyping, early-stage prioritization 💡Tip: Use ICE when you don’t have a ton of data but still need to move. 5. Value vs. Effort Matrix ✅ Use when: You want to visualize trade-offs with stakeholders. 📌 Best for: Roadmap discussions, stakeholder alignment 💡Tip: Plot features on a 2×2: * Quick Wins (High value, low effort) * Strategic Bets (High value, high effort) * Time Wasters (Low value, high effort) * Fillers (Low value, low effort) So which one should you pick? Use RICE when you’re in a data-driven company. Use MoSCoW when time is tight and alignment is tough. Use ICE when you need speed > accuracy. Use Kano when delight matters. Use the Value/Effort Matrix when people keep asking, “Why this first?” 📌 Save this for your next prioritization war. 💬 Tried any of these at work? Drop your go-to framework in comments! #productmanager #job #PMjobs #learning #frameworks

Most PMs are prioritizing the wrong things. It’s not about building the most features. 𝗜𝘁’𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘀. When everything feels urgent, the real skill is choosing what 𝘯𝘰𝘵 to do. Here are quick, proven techniques to simplify your prioritization process: 🚦 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗶𝗴 𝗽𝗶𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 → Mission: Why does this product exist? → Vision: Where are we headed? → Strategy: What will get us there? → Goals: What matters 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘸? → Metrics: What do we measure to stay on track? But the real challenge? Balancing speed, strategy, and stakeholder alignment. My top 5 frameworks to help you navigate a backlog: 🟢 𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗘 𝗦𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 Evaluate projects based on: ↳ Reach: How many users will it impact? ↳ Impact: What’s the effect on each user? ↳ Confidence: How sure are we about our estimates? ↳ Effort: How much time will it take? RICE score: (Reach × Impact × Confidence) / Effort 🟢 𝗪𝗦𝗝𝗙 (𝗪𝗲𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗝𝗼𝗯 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁) WSJF helps you build what’s most valuable—fast: ↳ Job Size: How big or complex is the work ↳ Cost of Delay = User-Business Value + Time Criticality + Risk Reduction / Opportunity Enablement WSJF Score = Cost of Delay ÷ Job Size 🟢 𝗠𝗼𝗦𝗖𝗼𝗪 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱 This method clarifies priorities and sets expectations: ↳ Must have: Essential features. ↳ Should have: Important but not critical. ↳ Could have: Nice to have. ↳ Won’t have: Not for this time. 🟢 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝘃𝘀. 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝗿𝗶𝘅 Plot your initiatives on a 2x2 grid: ↳ High Value, Low Complexity: Quick wins. ↳ High Value, High Complexity: Strategic projects. ↳ Low Value, Low Complexity: Fill-ins. ↳ Low Value, High Complexity: Time sinks. 🟢 𝗞𝗮𝗻𝗼 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹 Classify features based on customer satisfaction: ↳ Must-be: Basic expectations. ↳ Performance: More is better. ↳ Attractive: Delightful surprises. The best product teams don’t rely on a single technique. They blend methods based on goals, clarity, and team dynamics. Let’s stop guessing and start building smarter. 📌 𝗪𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗮 𝗱𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀? Product Map dives deeper with clear examples and resources. Here is the link to the detailed guide on Prioritization 👇 https://lnkd.in/e2tQCiHp ♻️ Repost to share the value. 📩 Which technique works best for your team? Let’s discuss this in comments!

“Startups don't starve. They drown...” They drown in too much information, too much analysis, too much conflicting feedback, too much "important" work. Where do you start? Even mantras like "right action, right time," I espouse, run up against practical ground realities. Most people simply guess or vibe their way, but here’s the expensive reality: When you don’t have a systematic way to prioritize and pick what feels most urgent or what the loudest customer complained about, you end up burning time, cash, and momentum. In this week's YouTube video, I outline a 4-step prioritization framework I use for picking where to focus. It combines a popular product priorization framework, RICE, with Fermi Estimations. RICE stands for: • Reach: How many customers will this impact? • Impact: What's the value per customer? • Confidence: How certain are we? • Effort: What's the cost to build? The formula: (Reach × Impact × Confidence) ÷ Effort But here's the problem most people face: How do you score objectively without fooling yourself? Should onboarding be a 7 or an 8? Is that feature worth $5,000 or $7,500? This is where Fermi estimation comes in... Instead of false precision, I use order-of-magnitude scales: • Reach: 1, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 • Impact: $100, $1K, $10K, $100K • Confidence: 20%, 50%, 80% • Effort: 2 hours, 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months You go from fudging numbers to justify the thing you want to build to prioritizing the right work. More in the full video...