One of the hardest words in Product Management is: No.
On one trading and analytics platform, we had around 30 features competing for attention and investment. The obvious response was to keep building. Instead, I wanted to understand what was actually creating value.
We looked at usage, customer behaviour and commercial contribution. The picture became much clearer. Around 10 capabilities were generating most of the meaningful value.
So rather than treating every feature equally, we refocused the roadmap around the areas customers genuinely used and valued. The result was increased active clients and stronger retention.
But the bigger lesson stayed with me. A roadmap should not be a collection of stakeholder requests. Every development decision consumes scarce engineering capacity.
So I like asking: Who has this problem? How important is it? What evidence do we have? What happens if we do nothing? What commercial or customer outcome changes if we solve it? And increasingly: what would we stop doing to make room for it?
Good prioritisation is not about choosing between good and bad ideas. The difficult decisions usually involve choosing between several perfectly reasonable ideas. Sometimes the most valuable feature is the one you decide not to build.