Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 4/5

Zima: Rigorous feature prioritization frameworks are a waste of time

Colin Zima · How to leverage intuition, customer support, and raw effort | Colin Zima (Omni & Looker) · Oct 12, 2023 · at 35:49

Colin Zima, CEO of Omni and former VP of Product at Looker, shares his view on why algorithmic scoring systems fail in product prioritization.

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“I just, I really think it's hard to come up with a great, like scoring framework for how to pick out the next 10 features, because I found that every single time that we tried to apply some sort of rigorous, like scoring framework to difficulty and reach and You know, like customer tears. It was just like a silly exercise in trying to create structure to something that was ultimately unstructured underneath it, which is like someone was going to make a decision that was essentially cost and effort versus versus payout.”

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