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Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.
Our reading
Most product ideas deliver little or no value; a small minority create significant impact.
Their wordsBut the odds of finding such an idea are quite low. A/B-test research shows that the vast majority of ideas deliver little or no value; some even detract value. Analyze feature usage in your product and look at past roadmaps, and you’ll see a clear power law — a small minority of your ideas create significant impact. The reason is simple: in most products most low-hanging fruit have already been picked. The odds of coming up with something novel and truly good are quite slim.
Our reading
Roadmap prioritization leans on heuristics under uncertainty and often kills the best ideas.
Their wordsPrioritization relies heavily on our ability to discern good ideas from bad. Experience, intuition, and logic play a central role. However, the question “which of these 20 ideas will best achieve the goals” is a very complex one, and often there’s not enough information to answer it. Our brains are definitely not designed to deal with so much uncertainty, and we’re likely to subconsciously revert to mental shortcuts and heuristics to lighten the cognitive burden — risk aversion, halo effects, groupthink and many more. Some of the best ideas are novel, counterintuitive, or unimpressive, so they may not do well here.
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