We’ve all been on customer calls where we’re asked for a feature that just does not align with our product strategy. It’s not a problem if one request is an outlier, but how should you handle recurring requests from your customers that do not align with your product strategy? In this webinar, product management veterans share real examples of feature requests that did not naturally fit with the company’s vision.

1. Aligning Product Strategy with Customer
Feature Requests

2. Who is joining us today?

4. Brought to you by The Product Stack, a group of like-minded organizations
that offer practical solutions for modern product teams. Our quest is to shine
a light on the challenges everyday product teams face and offer up real
advice and solutions that address these challenges head on.

5. Kevin Steigerwald
Notion Founder, CPO
Today’s Panel
Dan Podsedly
VP of Pivotal Labs,
GM of Tracker
Greg Goodman
ProductPlan Founder,
CEO
Submit questions at anytime during the webinar!

6. Agile product management
can be challenging.
That one feature request...

7. Agenda
1. Customer feedback and your product vision
2. Deciding what to build
3. How to use metrics to align product strategy against
feature requests
4. Questions & Answers

8. Customer Feedback and
Your Product Vision

9. How do you gather customer feedback?

11. Hearing vs. Understanding
● How easy is it for your customers to give feedback?
● Aggregate, organize, and look for patterns: what’s the big picture?
● Every feedback is an opportunity for a conversation to understand the
underlying problem or need
● Does it align with your product vision?

12. What Is Your Product Vision?
● What problems are you solving?
● Who is it for, who is not for?
● Do your team and customers
understand your vision?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/robie06/2223271345

13. Example: Per-Developer Velocity
● Per-developer velocity reports are a popular
Tracker feature request
● But, not in line with vision of team emphasis
and collective ownership
● Opportunity to reframe problem!

14. Example: Story Dependencies
● Dependencies = Gantt, complexity!
● ...but wait, it’s actually about expressing impediments
● Blockers feature: designed around underlying problem, successful

15. The Third Option
● Enable customers to solve their own problems via API, plugins
● Complementary products via integrations
+
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16. Deciding What to Build

17. Who is primarily driving your product strategy?

19. Typical Approaches
• Executives drive roadmap
• Most important customer drives it
• Founder driven
• The most frequently requested

20. One Approach

21. Balancing Needs
✓

22. Our Approach

23. And then, they wanted
“dependencies”...

24. ProductPlan’s Vision:
Create Beautiful Roadmaps

25. What We Didn’t Want

26. We kept hearing the same story

27. Explored Different Alternatives

28. Tested with Customers
• Struggled with the naming, didn’t want to
call it “Dependencies”
• Talked about “Connectors Relationship”
• Settled on “Connections”

29. The Final Feature

30. 5 Lessons Learned
1. Be open minded
2. Don’t settle with something you’re unhappy with
3. Your product roadmap isn’t a democracy
4. Feature foresight is important
5. Saying no is also an option

31. How to Use Metrics to Align Product
Strategy Against Feature Requests

32. What’s the biggest challenge you face when
evaluating a feature request?

34. Whenever you get a feature request, there are potentially
six versions of your product you need to be aware of.

35. Whenever you get a feature request, there are potentially
six versions of your product you need to be aware of.

36. Metrics can help you answer some tough questions
about your customer’s feature request and
communicate roadmap changes to your team.
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? ?
?

37. Did you build the right thing?
You can also look at feature
adoption as a percentage of
your user base.
Number of users who did a feature
------ DIVIDED BY ------
Total number of users

38. Are you building the right thing next?
How frequently does your
customer’s request come up?
Does your roadmap align with
what users are asking for?
Did you just ship something
that resulted in an unforeseen
feature request?
Feature requests can be tagged in Intercom and
then trended over time in Notion.

39. Do your visions align and at what cost?
Total Dev Team 2wk Salary
------ DIVIDED BY ------
Velocity
Other questions to ask/track:
What will it cost to maintain it?
How does it change our MRR?
How do we measure success?
Common dev performance metrics can help you understand expected delivery and
bottlenecks for building a new feature. But what’s the true cost of building a feature?

41. Questions?
Continue the conversation at www.TheProductStack.com
Free Product Trials:
www.productplan.com
www.pivotaltracker.com
www.usenotion.com

42. Thank You.
Continue the conversation at www.TheProductStack.com
Free Product Trials:
www.productplan.com
www.pivotaltracker.com
www.usenotion.com