Every software program product supervisor of their profession felt the burden of product prioritization, the place each resolution carries weighty penalties. They typically discover themselves inundated with huge info, opinions, and experiences, but they need to shortly acknowledge beliefs from information and make important selections. And it turns into completely essential they acknowledge the cognitive traps that may cloud their judgment.
One such cognitive bias that ceaselessly 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 guaranteeing 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 info and making fast judgments to make sure our survival. Availability bias is one such shortcut system.
Due to it, people are inclined to rely closely on info that readily involves thoughts once we make selections. Our brains naturally understand info that’s simply remembered or stands out extra as beingimportant or prone to occur, even when that will not be the case. We give simply accessible info or experiences extra weight in our decision-making course of, even when they won’t be consultant or correct.
In product administration, this bias can develop into problematic when it leads us to prioritize available however doubtlessly incomplete or deceptive info over a extra complete and correct understanding of the state of affairs. To offer you an instance — each product supervisor will in the end 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 important once we will put it on the roadmap?”
Nonetheless, the truth that a function request was talked about thrice inside the final month could be insignificant in comparison with different product alternatives or function requests. There is perhaps requests from extra essential clients or deliberate tasks of strategic significance (e.g., constructing new product differentiation).
The hazard lies within the dangers related to this cognitive entice, as falling for it may result in long-lasting product penalties.
First, this cognitive shortcut can lead to a biased pattern of person knowledge and their issues. Once you depend on the latest person interactions, chances are you’ll overlook the wants of different customers with extra important necessities. This will skew your understanding of your audience’s wants and forestall you from absolutely understanding their challenges. Keep in mind that probably the most vocal clients should not essentially one of the best illustration of your preferrred consumer profile.
Secondly, by counting on simply accessible knowledge and data, you’re willingly limiting your area perspective, risking lacking out on beneficial insights and overlooking potential alternatives for innovation. It’s vital for product managers to actively work on broadening their understanding of the issue house with steady product discovery and synthesize further context from gross sales & enlargement knowledge, competitors evaluation, or market developments. To make a well-informed resolution throughout prioritization, it’s essential to have as a lot full details about your product state of affairs as doable.
Furthermore, neglecting steady product discovery and relying simply on current buyer suggestions can result in the unsuitable design selections. Customers might solely typically know or precisely articulate their underlying wants, and relying solely on their enter can lead to a design that addresses solely surface-level points.
The ultimate threat arises with regards to attaining strategic objectives. Availability bias, by its very nature, favors fast and simply recalled info — more often than not — very current info, which may shift your focus away from attaining long-term strategic aims. This short-term orientation can have detrimental results on the product roadmap, technique, and total buyer satisfaction, because it overlooks the broader imaginative and prescient and long-term improvement of the product.
In terms of battling availability bias, consciousness is significant. Merely understanding this bias and its affect in your decision-making can go a great distance in combating its affect. Acknowledging its presence (or its impact in your previous work), you’ll be able to actively problem given assumptions and attempt for a extra balanced perspective when assessing the following product alternatives or points.
One of many best methods to construct this angle is by centralizing your product knowledge and suggestions. By bringing collectively all related info in a single place, you create a holistic view of your clients’ issues and wishes, which broadens your perspective when evaluating product concepts and have requests. Centralizing the information may also present proof for prioritization discussions or de-escalation of buyer points. It’s going to aid you focus your efforts on issues that matter probably the most.
Nonetheless, it’s essential to usually share this data along with your stakeholders and colleagues outdoors the product division. As a product supervisor, you’ll all the time have a significantly better understanding of the broader buyer context, and it’s essential 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 may set off discussions revealing further context or reveal lacking info streams (e.g., lacking gross sales knowledge in win-loss evaluation).
Most significantly, guaranteeing that your decision-making aligns with the long-term product imaginative and prescient and enterprise technique is essential. The hard-to-swallow reality is that you’ll by no means have sufficient improvement capability to concurrently handle each buyer want, function request and execute your preferrred product plan. Inevitably, robust prioritization discussions and selections will come up the place totally different stakeholders will attempt to steer the priorities in numerous instructions. Your product imaginative and prescient and technique develop into your most dear property 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 greatest enemy main you to skewed priorities, missed alternatives, and compromised long-term strategic objectives. Nonetheless, it’s a struggle it’s essential to take as a product supervisor to step up your recreation and work on issues that transfer the needle probably the most.
Moreover, the extra you’ll be able to overcome it, the extra you’ll discover that you just’re centered, can simply prioritize, and shorten on a regular basis discussions.
In as we speak’s continually altering markets, the main target is king. And that alone makes it, in my eyes, a struggle price combating.
So my fellow product managers, let me ask you once more:
How actually pressing is the final buyer request that you just heard? Isn’t there the rest you have to be specializing in?
