5 Prioritization Mistakes I've Made in My Career

5 prioritization mistakes I've made in my career:

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1. Thinking "effort" = development time
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Let's say you revamp a core flow in your product e.g. Sending an email campaign in marketing tool.

Development is just part of the cost.

Creating new training, redoing videos, updating product tours, changing tooltips etc. add a great deal of overhead that can change their status in your prioritization framework.

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2. Succumbing to the Hippo

Hippo = highest paid professional opinion, usually the man who pays the bills.

Don't get me wrong. The Hippo knows a lot. However, one person's opinion is as strong as their weakest assumption.

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3. Forgetting to contextualize data

Noticing a declining trend but not investigating the "Why" and thus, prioritizing a fix for the symptom, rather than the root cause.

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4. Thinking I'm the customer

Making a gut-based decision without even researching the customer's viewpoint to save time.

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5. Allowing starvation

Letting certain important but low priority items like tech debt collect dust in the backlog for several months with no action in sight.