Prioritization Techniques Compared - Part 1

Prioritization is more than a checklist; it is the cognitive struggle of evaluating ideas and ordering them, and most teams get it wrong because they rely on gut, consensus, or outdated heuristics. The article argues that without a steady stream of evidence, even the most popular frameworks become guesswork and can fuel internal conflict. It shows how the shift from opinion-driven choices to evidence-guided discovery changes the role of prioritization from a one-time roadmap decision to a continuous, data-informed process. Intuition, consensus and HiPPO may work in tiny startups, but as organizations grow they introduce bias, groupthink, and slow decision making. Human judgment still matters, yet the author stresses that methods should serve judgment, not replace it. Rules of thumb such as MoSCoW, Kano, the Eisenhower matrix or the Ideo triple lens are easy to explain but vague, leaving teams to interpret them subjectively and without clear success metrics. They often reinforce the same opinion-driven biases they aim to avoid. Cost of Delay approaches like CD3 and WSJF bring quantitative rigor by measuring value, urgency and risk, but they focus heavily on monetary outcomes, suffer from estimation difficulty, and ignore the evidence that should inform those numbers. The author suggests broadening the definition of value beyond revenue, adding confidence scores, and integrating evidence into the calculation. The takeaway is clear: product leaders should treat prioritization as an evidence-driven discipline, adapt existing metrics to include customer and strategic value, and use the methods as decision-support tools rather than definitive answers.