When managing a flood of feature requests, prioritization is essential. My approach is to focus first on features that provide immediate value to the majority of users while aligning with the app’s core vision. I assess each request based on potential impact, user demand, and technical feasibility. Features that enhance user experience, address pain points, or increase engagement naturally rank higher. I also consider long-term goals, ensuring each new addition supports scalability and sustainable growth. By balancing user needs with strategic objectives, I prioritize features that not only improve the app but also help it evolve meaningfully in line with user expectations and future goals.

I've worked for several startup companies building web applications for the data and financial industry. Because they were startups -always trying to be first to market-, most of the applications were simultaneously being built and demoed to prospective clients. During the first phase, we prioritized the features that the company founders thought should make the minimal viable product(MVP). On a second phase, we prioritized additional features based on prospective clients' feedback, difficulty of development, business goals, workforce bandwidth, etc. Although the user experience(UX) had a presence from the beginning of the process, it is at this second stage where we added an extra effort to enhance the user experience of the new features.

In my opinion, following are the high level factors that should be considered while prioritising the feature request 1. Business Value 2. User Needs 3. Technical Complexity 4. Urgency

I balance short-term deliverables with long-term objectives, delivering quick wins to maintain momentum while investing in features critical to the platform’s growth. - I prioritize features that solve critical pain points or significantly enhance the user experience, leveraging analytics, feedback, and user surveys to guide decisions. - Features that align with strategic objectives, like boosting retention, revenue, or achieving scalability goals (as I’ve handled in blockchain projects), take precedence. - I evaluate the complexity and resource requirements of each request, prioritizing those that integrate well with the current infrastructure, such as AWS or Kafka setups.

Thing that I have found useful is to utilize WSJF prioritization framework. Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) is a prioritization framework commonly used in agile and lean practices, particularly in the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). It helps decide the order in which features or tasks should be implemented by balancing the value they deliver against the effort required. WSJF = Job Size/Cost of Delay Why Use WSJF? Focus on Value Delivery: It ensures you prioritize tasks that offer the most value quickly. Avoids Over-Indexing on Size: It balances delivering big wins with completing quick, smaller tasks. Data-Driven Decisions: Helps reduce bias by grounding prioritization in measurable factors.

It’s all about prioritization. Two of my favorite techniques for setting priority are: 1. Rate each feature(1-5) based on the amount of effort to implement and by the level of user/business value. Multiply the effort by the value for each at pick the top ones. 2. Ask yourself, will a prospect buy if we build this feature. Or will a current customer churn if we don’t build this feature.

Speaking from experience, I believe that the weight of prioritization should be based on a balance of company goals and user impact. Feature requests that are aligned with company goals and also has a big impact on users would be hitting two birds with one stone. Plus, it also would be easy to get corporate buy-in! From there, we can got with either one that contributes to shorter term goals or most user impact. Technical feasibility shouldn't come last but in my opinion it should be done on a regular basis to keep away from technical debt.

Consider short-term and long-term goals and try to balance them. Choose a frame work that helps you describe, visualise, categorise, compare and ultimately rank your issues. Eisenhower/impact-effort matrices, kano, MoSCoW, etc. there’s a nuch of them. Don’t just decide this on your own. Work on this with your team to emphasize the need and purpose for the priorities and to get buy-in.