Every software program product supervisor of their profession felt the burden of product prioritization, the place each choice carries weighty penalties. They typically discover themselves inundated with huge data, opinions, and experiences, but they have to shortly acknowledge beliefs from info and make crucial choices. And it turns into completely essential they acknowledge the cognitive traps that may cloud their judgment.
One such cognitive bias that steadily 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 varied customer-facing roles.
Understanding and mitigating the affect of availability bias is paramount in guaranteeing that your choices are grounded in a complete and unbiased evaluation of all of the product priorities.
All through the course of evolution, our brains have developed varied environment friendly programs for processing data 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 data that readily involves thoughts once we make choices. Our brains naturally understand data that’s simply remembered or stands out extra as beingimportant or more likely to occur, even when that is probably not the case. We give simply accessible data 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 change 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?”
Nonetheless, the truth that a function request was talked about thrice throughout the final month could be insignificant in comparison with different product alternatives or function requests. There may be 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 lure, as falling for it may well result in long-lasting product penalties.
First, this cognitive shortcut can lead to a biased pattern of consumer knowledge and their issues. While you depend on the latest consumer 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 totally understanding their challenges. Keep in mind that essentially the most vocal clients should not essentially the perfect illustration of your perfect consumer profile.
Secondly, by counting on simply accessible knowledge and data, you’re willingly limiting your area perspective, risking lacking out on worthwhile insights and overlooking potential alternatives for innovation. It is important for product managers to actively work on broadening their understanding of the issue house with steady product discovery and synthesize extra context from gross sales & growth knowledge, competitors evaluation, or market tendencies. To make a well-informed choice 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 latest buyer suggestions can result in the flawed design choices. Customers could solely generally 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 targets. Availability bias, by its very nature, favors speedy and simply recalled data — more often than not — very latest data, 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 general buyer satisfaction, because it overlooks the broader imaginative and prescient and long-term growth of the product.
On the subject 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 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 data in a single place, you create a holistic view of your clients’ issues and desires, which broadens your perspective when evaluating product concepts and have requests. Centralizing the info can even present proof for prioritization discussions or de-escalation of buyer points. It’s going to assist you focus your efforts on issues that matter essentially the most.
Nonetheless, you need to frequently share this information together with your stakeholders and colleagues exterior 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 means. This common communication is totally important for long-term alignment. Furthermore, it may well set off discussions revealing extra context or reveal lacking data 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 fact is that you’ll by no means have sufficient growth capability to concurrently tackle each buyer want, function request and execute your perfect product plan. Inevitably, powerful prioritization discussions and choices will come up the place completely different stakeholders will attempt to steer the priorities in numerous instructions. Your product imaginative and prescient and technique change into your most respected 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 change into a product supervisor’s greatest enemy main you to skewed priorities, missed alternatives, and compromised long-term strategic targets. Nonetheless, it’s a combat you need to take as a product supervisor to step up your recreation 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 as we speak’s continuously altering markets, the main focus is king. And that alone makes it, in my eyes, a combat price preventing.
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 the rest you have to be specializing in?
