As a Product Manager, sometimes you may need to prioritize some product’s features above others, as per their impact on the set goals and objectives. There is no easy way to do this because each feature is essential and works towards achieving the objectives.
The Weighted Scoring system can be a great instrument to help you do this. It is a standardized framework that prioritizes your product’s roadmap. The process entails getting a rank of several product features in different categories and then using the benefits and cost analysis to measure their importance.
The most challenging part is determining the features to include in the process and which ones shall wither away in the backlog.
This process inevitably helps Product Managers prioritize features with the simple scoring method. It can be used to make all sorts of decisions in Product Development, and it will make it easy for the Product Managers to figure out what is more critical in the Product Life Cycle.
Here’s how you can create the Weighted Scoring Model
You can adopt the following step-by-step guide to develop the weightiest features in your Product Development process.
Step 1 – Prepare a list with all the options you have
This is the first and simplest step in the process. You will be required to identify all of the options you want to incorporate into the product and with no regard to priority, difficulty, or other factors. This list should include things such as;
- The main product features
- The main steps
- The software options available
- The potential candidates you wish to hire
Step2 – Identify the Criteria you wish to use to weigh them
Once you have a list going on of what you want to accomplish, the next step is to figure out criteria that will enable you to put some weight on each option. This could be in terms of:
- Time
- Cost
- Quality
- Risk
- Effort
- Return on your investment
The criteria you use should be specific to the product, and if you happen to be dealing with something more technical, you might need to add the software required to develop the product.
Now, regardless of the criteria, ensure that you are consistent with the measurements you wish to consider, such as the cost of development at each stage.
Step 3 –Assign Weights to the Criteria
In this case, some criteria will be more important than the others, and you will not find two measures having the same weight. It would be best if you worked at assigning the weight values to each of them in percentage. This is usually much easier to deal with, as it has to be out of 100%.
Step 4: Create the Scoring Chart
Once you have the options and the weights, then you can create your matrix. Fill in the options in the chart, and then you can give each one a value from 1 to 5. This is the scoring. You can also use whichever range you want.
After this, calculate the weight of each option with the weights and the score. This is a fantastic number-based technology that will make it easy for you to decide on the Product Development Process’s essential features.
That is the basic understanding of the weighted decision-making matrix method and how you can use it to prioritize the different options you have in the Product Development Process.
Benefits of Using this Scoring Process
This process is vital during Product Management. It helps you identify processes that need to be completed before others and those that will be more beneficial to the business once they are completed in the long run.
Here are some other benefits of making use of this method in Product Management;
- It ensures that all the Product Roadmap tasks are valuable to the company, mainly when analyzed against their cost.
- It gets rid of friction that may be found amongst the team members due to decision-making.
- It is a cost-benefit analysis method that guarantees all tasks are completed in the order of their importance and in alignment with the company’s overall goals of profit maximization and cost reduction.
- It avoids over-reliance on the manual Product Development process during the backlog process and speeding up the development while prioritizing the options, which improves efficiency.
With time, this weighing process is consistent with identifying low-value tasks and gives the Product Owners the chance to remove them from the backlog, saving the company in terms of cost.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Product Managers need to use all the tools at their disposal to choose tasks that will bring value to the business as a whole. They shouldn’t waste too much time making decisions and moving back and forth trying to identify what is more important and what can be dropped.
