ASK IH: How do you prioritise what you build?

I used to scrabble around in the dark, make lists on paper, or sometimes a Trello board or spread sheet which scrolled far past the edge of the screen. Those were dark times.

Late last year I discovered a new workflow that has like tripled my output and kept me focused.

1. I signed up for the free trial of https://clubhouse.io/ to get off of Trello as I needed more structure for a fast moving project
2. I brought all my Google Sheet tasks into Clubhouse as Stories (Total time.. 2 minutes?)
3. I created a few major Epics. App MVP1, Marketing Spinup, Dev Environment Spinup, and a milestone containing the Epics (total time taken here.. 20 seconds?)
4. I arranged all the cards into Epics and left a lot Unassigned (ie not in any close range release)
5. I further whittled down the stories in the Epics to try and focus on a core functionality release
6. I moved some stories into 'Ready for Development' and sorted them the way I wanted. Some days its by difficulty and I want to tackle something hard first, some days I want to knock off some easy tasks
7. The next day I opened up Clubhouse, checked out my little runway for the day, and banged out some tasks, moving each one into Complete.
8. I can see on the dashboard how far along I am, and it's SUPER motivating to see those %'s climb towards 100. It's also cathartic to move things into Complete.
9. Whenever I have a new thought, I crank up a new story and assign it to an Epic if I can, and then forget about it til later. This has decreased lost thoughts by 99%, and I don't have to rely on remembering things later, thinking Oh this is obvious I'm sure I will think of this again later.
10. Each night I go back over the stories and move a few new ones into Ready for development. Sometimes I sort the unscheduled stories by priority and sometimes I cherry pick. But I constantly move things out of an Epic so I can focus on a release. I tend to add things IN when I'm feeling ambitious

So there's something about using Clubhouse which makes it super fun to use. I've done an incredible amount of work through it, it has just enough detail for me and adds the bare minimum of process while I get a TON of value out of it.

I like to keep a few different Epics around that aren't development, arranged into project like Marketing or BizDev. this lets me switch gears and keep moving forward, staying focused as much as possible, and certainly more than I did in any year of the past.

Atlassian has a video on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLXcdzBQslM

Great advice on roadmaps/prioritization.

What @jgriffith said!

On top of that, I like to work in cycles. Some days I feel like programming and other days writing content. I like to use what I'm feeling like doing to be more productive. No sense trying to do something that's a slog when you could be really productive doing something else.

You have to fit those tasks in to the overall priorities though, which is generally to make money.

Looking back: whatever you need to build in order to monetize. As makers I think we get caught in this endless product-cycle of "wouldn't it be cool if it did XYZ" and "Once we do this then we can do that!"... and the money part never happens. It's admittedly one of the more chore-ish parts of building something, but if money doesn't come in the boat begins to sink before you can realize all your product aspirations!

After that, in my opinion, I'd begin asking "what will keep folks using us and telling their friends about it?" Build answers to those questions! Always keep your perspective aligned with the end-users, and the what-to-build questions tend to answer themselves (hopefully) :)

Best of luck!

I recently started applying the user story mapping technique for the company I work in and already love it. You go through the entire user flow of high level steps of using your product with a horizontal spine. Under each step you break it down into more detailed steps (laid out vertically) and you end up with a HUGE amount of work. Then you organize those verticals by importance and break it into releases. I read it from an O'Reilly book but here's an arbitrary link - https://manifesto.co.uk/user-story-mapping/

The most important thing for me was to make a more formal product strategy. I used to just work on what was interesting or what I thought my customers needed.

This doesn't have to be detailed or fancy, the idea is just to have a plan and sound reasoning for what to build and why. Who are you trying to help with this feature? Why do they need it? What value does it provide? How does it work with other features in your product? How does it work with other tools/systems that they are using?

This helps with deciding which features to work on and when.

For bugs, I have a prioritized list. Critical bugs are always top priority and everything else goes on hold. Normal bugs are addressed when I am in a related area of the product working on features or I will do a bug fix development cycle (1 week or so as needed).

For onboarding and stuff more on the marketing side, a system like this works nicely: https://baremetrics.com/blog/marketing-idea-scoring-system. Evaluate the impact, cost, and level of effort for everything and use that to make a score.

For scheduling everything, decide your priorities. What percentage of your time (over a long period) do you want to spend on each area?

Divide the work into project cycles and switch between areas as your priorities dictate. Switching makes sure no single area is subject to starvation.

It's worked pretty well for me as a solo product owner.

P.S. I also try not to stress about the size of any list. Focus on what's important and what you prioritized before. Don't worry about prioritization when you are working on the product. Do prioritization and development separately.

Keep at it and you'll make a ton of progress over time!