Product ExecutionProduct Design
How do you prioritize competing features?
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Expert Answer
Anonymous
10 months ago
When prioritizing competing features for Duolingo, I'd start by diving deep into our user data and feedback. What are language learners struggling with most? Where do we see drop-offs in engagement? I'd look at metrics like daily active users, lesson completion rates, and user retention across different features.
Next, I'd align potential features with Duolingo's core mission of making language learning accessible and effective. Does a feature significantly improve learning outcomes or make the experience more engaging? How does it fit into our gamification model?
I'd also consider our business goals. While Duolingo's core app is free, we need to balance features that drive user growth with those that might convert free users to premium subscribers.
Resource constraints are crucial too. I'd work closely with our engineering team to understand the complexity and development time for each feature. A quick win that takes a week to implement might take priority over a more impactful feature that requires months of work.
To systematically evaluate features, I might use a framework like RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) scoring. This helps quantify our assessment and makes the prioritization process more objective.
Importantly, I'd ensure we're balancing short-term improvements with our long-term vision. For instance, a feature introducing more speaking exercises might be a bigger effort but could dramatically improve learning outcomes and differentiate us from competitors.
Finally, I'd emphasize an iterative approach. We could release features as A/B tests to a subset of users, gather data on their impact, and refine our priorities based on real-world performance.
Throughout this process, I'd collaborate closely with our cross-functional teams - from curriculum experts to UI designers - to ensure we're considering all perspectives and creating the best possible learning experience for our users
Anonymous
5 months ago
When it comes to competing features, I prioritize by evaluating urgency, impact and strategic alignment with business goals. This generally has ensured that my decisions are well rounded by meeting immediate customer needs while not losing focus of long term goals. Here is how I assess
Urgency
- Number of customers impacted
- Segments of customers impacted
- Type of issue - Unable to use the software, impacting critical module
- Time-sensitive feature - competitive pressure / compliance deadlines / customer threatening to leave
Impact
- Impact on critical business metrics
- How many customers / users will benefit from this
- Potential ROI in terms of revenue and CSat
Strategic alignment
- Long term value on business goals
- Does it support or complement upcoming initiatives
- Is it critical to scaling or future proofing the product
Lets consider 2 features - one addresses customer pain point while the other addresses a long term strategic goal, I would first analyze the urgency, impact and strategic alignment of each of the features. I would consider the metrics that will get impacted - user retention, revenue, operational efficiency. I would also analyze the impact on delaying the delivery of the feature immediately and make a decision based on these evaluations.
For example - Recently I worked with conflicting priorities with one feature that addresses a customer complaint that brings in high volume credit card payments for our company and the other feature that addresses scaling up the servers to better handle the api requests. In this case, I prioritized the customer complaint first as this directly affects user retention and revenue metrics. Prioritizing this feature also allowed me to build trust with this customer. I prioritized the scaling servers feature to the next sprint as it had no immediate impact while we also had a temporary way of dealing with this issue. This way I am also able to balance immediate results and long term goals.
Anonymous
a year ago
Once we have a list of features from the stakeholders, we need to stack rank them as per priority to implement them in a phased manner. This is decided by following various frameworks but not limited to MOSCOW, RICE etc. But essentially it boils down to effort or cost vs impact. How much we have to spend and what is the impact. We also need to review competition, market trend, user interview etc to see how those features suit their needs and how they are aligned to company goal, strategies and vision.
Anonymous
7 months ago
If two features compete against each other in resources I will use metrics to define the impact of both of them. Based on strategic priorities, the initiative that score a higher score in metrics and KPI´s will be prioritized first. This process will include all relevant stakeholders including the scrum team
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