What Strategies Do You Use to Prioritize Features in a SaaS Product Roadmap?
SaaS Perspective
What Strategies Do You Use to Prioritize Features in a SaaS Product Roadmap?
In the fast-paced world of software as a service (SaaS), prioritizing features can make or break a product's success. We've gathered insights from Chief Product Officers and Product Managers, who offer strategies from leveraging customer-centric feedback to prioritizing with user feedback loops. Here are the top five effective strategies these experts have employed in their SaaS product roadmaps.
- Leverage Customer-Centric Feedback
- Utilize A/B Testing for Impact
- Apply Weighted Scoring Method
- Combine Agile with Severity Assessment
- Prioritize with User Feedback Loops
Leverage Customer-Centric Feedback
At FIBRES, our strategy for prioritizing features in our product roadmap stems from our customer-centric approach to literally everything we do. We prioritize features based on regular customer success calls as well as sales meetings, where we gather comprehensive feedback to understand our users' needs and challenges. This allows us to focus on enhancements and new features that not only help our customers accomplish their tasks but also increase their engagement and encourage wider adoption of our product within their organizations.
We utilize an impact vs. effort analysis as a baseline for our roadmapping and internal discussions, but we also consider how many customer requests a single feature can address. This ensures that our development efforts have the broadest possible positive impact. Internally, our roadmap reviews involve customer success, sales and marketing, and technology viewpoints. This cross-functional collaboration helps us identify synergies and make optimal decisions from multiple perspectives.
Balancing short-term customer needs with our long-term vision is crucial. While we prioritize immediate customer requirements, we also pay special attention to features that align with our strategic goals for the future of foresight and futures work. For instance, we successfully prioritized the development of LLM-powered tools as new kinds of ways of working were starting to emerge within our user base after the introduction of ChatGPT. With the introduction of our trend-drafting tool, our users no longer need to switch between external AI tools and FIBRES. This feature not only met customer needs but also supported our vision of integrating advanced technologies into foresight practices, resulting in higher engagement and a more seamless workflow for our users.
This strategic roadmapping approach ensures that our product development is both responsive to current customer demands and aligned with our long-term vision. It drives continuous improvement and innovation in our SaaS offering and is a good match for our agile style of product development.
Utilize A/B Testing for Impact
When prioritizing features in a SaaS product roadmap, leveraging A/B testing can be incredibly effective. For example, I once worked with a SaaS company that had several feature requests from different customer segments. We decided to implement A/B testing to gauge which features had the most significant impact on user engagement and conversion rates.
By releasing two versions of the product with different feature sets to separate user groups, we could directly measure the impact of each feature. This data-driven approach not only clarified which features provided the most value but also ensured that the product roadmap aligned closely with user needs and preferences. Prioritizing features based on actual user behavior and preferences, rather than assumptions, led to a more targeted and successful product strategy.
Apply Weighted Scoring Method
One effective strategy we've used for prioritizing features in our SaaS product roadmap is the Weighted Scoring Method. This approach involves evaluating potential features based on several criteria that align with our strategic goals and customer needs.
First, we identify key criteria for evaluation, such as customer impact, revenue potential, development effort, and strategic alignment. Each criterion is assigned a weight based on its importance—e.g., customer impact and revenue potential might have higher weights than development effort.
Next, we score each potential feature against these criteria. For instance, a feature with high customer demand but low development effort might score very high, while a complex feature with minimal strategic alignment might score lower. The scores are then multiplied by their respective weights and summed up to give a total score for each feature.
For example, when deciding between several new features, we used this method and found that a frequently requested user analytics dashboard had the highest score. It was clear this feature would significantly enhance user experience and had considerable revenue potential, yet it required a moderate development effort. As a result, it was prioritized in the roadmap.
The Weighted Scoring Method allows us to make informed, data-driven decisions that reflect both our strategic priorities and our customers' needs. By quantifying the importance and impact of each feature, this strategy helps ensure that we focus on what truly matters, maximizing value for both our users and the business.
Combine Agile with Severity Assessment
Prioritizing features in a SaaS startup is more difficult than it sounds. On one hand, we have the technical team, who are limited in what they can achieve in specific timeframes (as we all are), as they balance long-term product goals and one-off issues. On the other hand, there is our client-facing team, which experiences and collects user issues and feedback constantly, resulting in many feature requests and bug reports. Then there's me in the middle—trying to filter through and prioritize what can make the biggest impact on our business, whether that be innovating for the user experience, cost/time savings, or enhancing what we already have.
To best prioritize features in our fast-paced startup, we conduct weekly meetings on Tuesday mornings to go over what was accomplished last week and what we want to accomplish this week. This is pretty similar to the Agile methodology sprint retrospective and planning meetings. After last week’s tasks are discussed and closed out, we move on to reviewing the existing medium-to-high-priority bugs and feature requests to move them into 'this week's work' goals. Each request, whether that's a bug or feature, gets assigned a severity status and a development time status. The severity (low, medium, high) status shows us what impact this is having or will have on our company goals. The development time status is set by the assigned developer who shares how long they estimate the task will take them (e.g., 15 minutes, 1-3 hours, half a day, full day, a week, etc.).
During our weekly one-hour call, we come together to assess the severity, development time, and current workload to determine what can be moved into this week's work. This is a collaborative task done by the tech team, product team, and client services team, which ensures we can all be heard and are all on the same page. I highly recommend trying this recurring Agile methodology-inspired retro/sprint planning meeting to help prioritize and complete features in your SaaS product roadmap.
Prioritize with User Feedback Loops
As a Product Owner for AI applications, one effective strategy I've used for prioritizing features is customer-driven prioritization through user feedback loops. We gather direct input from our alpha users through regular feedback sessions and surveys. This helps us understand the features that will have the most significant impact on their experience and address their pain points.