which role does product management work with to prioritize enablers

3 min read 22-02-2025

which role does product management work with to prioritize enablers

Product management plays a vital role in prioritizing enablers—those initiatives that improve the team's efficiency and effectiveness rather than directly creating customer-facing features. But product managers don't do this in a vacuum. Successfully prioritizing enablers requires collaboration and input from various key roles within an organization. This article explores those crucial partnerships.

The Importance of Prioritizing Enablers

Before diving into the collaborative aspect, let's quickly highlight why prioritizing enablers is crucial. Without investing in the right enablers, product teams can struggle with:

Slow development cycles: Inefficient processes and lack of proper tooling directly impact speed.
Low-quality releases: Insufficient testing or inadequate infrastructure can lead to buggy software.
Burnout and decreased morale: Working with outdated tools or inefficient processes leads to frustration.
Missed deadlines and market opportunities: Delays due to internal inefficiencies can have significant consequences.

Key Roles in Prioritizing Enablers

Effective enabler prioritization isn't solely the responsibility of the product manager. It requires a multi-disciplinary approach, leveraging the expertise and insights of several key roles:

1. Engineering

Technical feasibility and impact: Engineers provide crucial input on the technical feasibility of proposed enablers. They can assess the effort, potential risks, and long-term impact on the system architecture.
Resource allocation: Engineering managers help estimate the resources (time, personnel) required for implementing enablers. This informs the prioritization process by considering capacity constraints.
Identifying bottlenecks: Engineers are on the front lines and often identify bottlenecks in workflows or infrastructure that are hindering productivity. Their input is invaluable in pinpointing areas for improvement.

2. Design

Usability and efficiency of tools: Designers assess the usability and efficiency of proposed enablers, especially those involving new tools or workflows. They ensure that the chosen solutions are intuitive and improve the overall user experience for developers and other internal stakeholders.
Workflow improvements: Designers can contribute to improving the overall team workflow, such as suggesting new processes or streamlining existing ones, thereby indirectly improving efficiency.

3. Data Science/Analytics

Measuring the impact of enablers: Data scientists can help track the impact of implemented enablers. They provide quantitative evidence of the improvements achieved, such as increased developer velocity or reduced bug rates. This helps justify future enabler investments.

4. Operations

Infrastructure and tooling: Operations teams are critical in ensuring the stability and reliability of the systems and infrastructure that underpin the development process. They play a key role in identifying enablers related to infrastructure improvements.
Deployment and scaling: Understanding the operational implications of enablers ensures that they are scalable and won't create new operational challenges.

5. Leadership (Product, Engineering, etc.)

Strategic Alignment: Leadership provides the context for prioritizing enablers, ensuring they align with overall product strategy and company goals. This helps prevent the team from getting bogged down in less impactful initiatives.
Resource prioritization: Leadership ultimately makes the final decisions on resource allocation, balancing competing demands for enablers and product features.

The Product Manager's Role

The product manager acts as the orchestrator, bringing these different perspectives together. Their responsibilities include:

Gathering input: Actively soliciting input from all stakeholders to get a holistic view of the most impactful enablers.
Prioritization framework: Developing a clear prioritization framework that considers factors like technical feasibility, business value, and resource constraints.
Communication and alignment: Communicating the prioritization decisions clearly to all stakeholders and ensuring everyone is aligned on the plan.
Tracking and measurement: Monitoring the impact of implemented enablers and adjusting priorities as needed.

Prioritization Frameworks

Several frameworks can aid in prioritizing enablers:

RICE scoring (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort): A popular framework for prioritizing based on the potential reach, impact, confidence in success, and effort required.
MoSCoW method (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won't have): A simple but effective framework for categorizing enablers based on their importance.
Value vs. Effort matrix: A visual framework that plots enablers based on their perceived value and the effort required to implement them.

By effectively collaborating with these various roles and utilizing appropriate frameworks, product managers can successfully prioritize enablers, fostering a more efficient, productive, and ultimately more successful product development process. Investing in the right enablers is not just about improving efficiency; it's about unlocking the potential of the entire team and paving the way for sustained product success.