Every software program product supervisor of their profession felt the burden of product prioritization, the place each determination carries weighty penalties. They typically discover themselves inundated with huge data, opinions, and experiences, but they need to shortly acknowledge beliefs from information and make crucial selections. And it turns into completely essential they acknowledge the cognitive traps that may cloud their judgment.
One such cognitive bias that continuously lurks within the background is availability bias. This phenomenon can subtly distort the product supervisor’s decision-making course of, particularly when discussing product priorities with numerous customer-facing roles.
Understanding and mitigating the affect of availability bias is paramount in making certain that your selections are grounded in a complete and unbiased evaluation of all of the product priorities.
All through the course of evolution, our brains have developed numerous environment friendly techniques for processing data and making fast judgments to make sure our survival. Availability bias is one such shortcut system.
Due to it, people are likely to rely closely on data that readily involves thoughts once we make selections. Our brains naturally understand data that’s simply remembered or stands out extra as beingimportant or prone to occur, even when that might not be the case. We give simply accessible data or experiences extra weight in our decision-making course of, even when they may not be consultant or correct.
In product administration, this bias can develop into problematic when it leads us to prioritize available however probably incomplete or deceptive data over a extra complete and correct understanding of the scenario. To provide you an instance — each product supervisor will ultimately hear a query that goes alongside the traces: “That is the third time I had a buyer point out this performance to me this month, as that is clearly crucial once we will put it on the roadmap?”
Nevertheless, the truth that a function request was talked about thrice inside the final month will be insignificant in comparison with different product alternatives or function requests. There may be requests from extra vital prospects or deliberate tasks of strategic significance (e.g., constructing new product differentiation).
The hazard lies within the dangers related to this cognitive lure, as falling for it might result in long-lasting product penalties.
First, this cognitive shortcut may end up in a biased pattern of person information and their issues. If you depend on the latest person interactions, chances are you’ll overlook the wants of different customers with extra crucial necessities. This could skew your understanding of your target market’s wants and forestall you from absolutely understanding their challenges. Keep in mind that essentially the most vocal prospects should not essentially the perfect illustration of your very best shopper profile.
Secondly, by counting on simply accessible information and data, you’re willingly limiting your area perspective, risking lacking out on priceless insights and overlooking potential alternatives for innovation. It is important for product managers to actively work on broadening their understanding of the issue area with steady product discovery and synthesize extra context from gross sales & growth information, competitors evaluation, or market tendencies. To make a well-informed determination throughout prioritization, you need to have as a lot full details about your product scenario as potential.
Furthermore, neglecting steady product discovery and relying simply on current buyer suggestions can result in the flawed design selections. Customers could solely generally know or precisely articulate their underlying wants, and relying solely on their enter may end up in a design that addresses solely surface-level points.
The ultimate threat arises with regards to reaching strategic objectives. Availability bias, by its very nature, favors rapid and simply recalled data — more often than not — very current data, which may shift your focus away from reaching long-term strategic goals. This short-term orientation can have detrimental results on the product roadmap, technique, and general buyer satisfaction, because it overlooks the broader imaginative and prescient and long-term improvement of the product.
In the case of battling availability bias, consciousness is significant. Merely understanding this bias and its influence in your decision-making can go a great distance in combating its affect. Acknowledging its presence (or its impact in your previous work), you possibly can actively problem given assumptions and attempt for a extra balanced perspective when assessing the subsequent product alternatives or points.
One of many best methods to construct this attitude is by centralizing your product information and suggestions. By bringing collectively all related data in a single place, you create a holistic view of your prospects’ issues and desires, which broadens your perspective when evaluating product concepts and have requests. Centralizing the info will even present proof for prioritization discussions or de-escalation of buyer points. It would assist you to focus your efforts on issues that matter essentially the most.
Nevertheless, you need to frequently share this information together with your stakeholders and colleagues outdoors the product division. As a product supervisor, you’ll at all times have a a lot better understanding of the broader buyer context, and you need to clarify why you’ve determined to focus product efforts a sure approach. This common communication is completely very important for long-term alignment. Furthermore, it might set off discussions revealing extra context or reveal lacking data streams (e.g., lacking gross sales information in win-loss evaluation).
Most significantly, making certain that your decision-making aligns with the long-term product imaginative and prescient and enterprise technique is essential. The hard-to-swallow fact is that you’ll by no means have sufficient improvement capability to concurrently tackle each buyer want, function request and execute your very best product plan. Inevitably, powerful prioritization discussions and selections will come up the place totally different stakeholders will attempt to steer the priorities in several instructions. Your product imaginative and prescient and technique develop into your most useful belongings in such difficult moments, and also you, as a product supervisor, should guarantee all of the product priorities are aligned with them.
Availability bias can shortly develop into a product supervisor’s largest enemy main you to skewed priorities, missed alternatives, and compromised long-term strategic objectives. Nevertheless, it’s a battle you need to take as a product supervisor to step up your sport and work on issues that transfer the needle essentially the most.
Moreover, the extra you possibly can overcome it, the extra you’ll discover that you simply’re centered, can simply prioritize, and shorten on a regular basis discussions.
In right this moment’s continuously altering markets, the main focus is king. And that alone makes it, in my eyes, a battle price combating.
So my fellow product managers, let me ask you once more:
How actually pressing is the final buyer request that you simply heard? Isn’t there anything you have to be specializing in?
