Use a Product Value Matrix to Prioritize Your Roadmap — Reforge

There are a few product teams out there that have modified their product roadmaps so that each item is stated as a business problem to solve rather than the feature or project that may or may not solve it. These are called outcome‐based roadmaps.

Instead of managing an opportunity backlog, we’ll use an opportunity solution tree

The matrix has four quadrants: Upper left: Important and urgent—do it now! Upper right: Important, but not as urgent—get it on your schedule to do later. Lower left: Urgent, but not as important—delegate the task. Lower right: Not urgent and not important—just don’t do it!

Should we always prioritize easy over hard? If so, when do we ever get to the hard problems that have the potential to differentiate us from our competitors and really drive our outcomes? It’s hard to answer these questions when prioritizing opportunities of different shapes and sizes against each other. The opportunity space is too complex to mana