It’s always good to take a step back and consume the larger picture. What is the purpose and vision for your product? Everybody has an opinion and an agenda. Be it stakeholders looking to drive ROI, or engineering teams wanting to flex cutting edge technology. Ultimately the customer is key, which problems are you solving for your users? How are you providing value. You can have the shiniest, most polished product on the market but if it doesn’t provide value, it will not be adopted. It’s better to iterate and learn what your customers need, and continue adding value over time. Having a roadmap, for the sake of a roadmap, inherently slows progress. The ability to be agile and adapt to feedback is critical.

One thing I have found helpful is to have the entire team vote on items and the items that have the majority of votes is what gets priority. This is provided they all align with the companies goals and initiatives and the disagreements are a matter of some wanting their items worked on first. Putting items to a vote means you don’t have to be the bad guy making the decision.

When the team is divided over feature priorities, it’s important to navigate the situation by fostering open communication and focusing on data-driven decisions. Start by bringing everyone together to discuss each feature’s potential impact, user value, and alignment with business goals. Encourage team members to share their insights and concerns, ensuring every perspective is heard. Use data, such as user feedback and market research, to objectively assess which features will deliver the most value. If opinions remain split, consider running small-scale tests or pilot programs to gather real-world feedback. This approach helps find common ground and allows the team to make informed, strategic decisions.

When the team is misaligned on feature priorities, have open discussions allowing all stakeholders to share their position(s). It's our job to ground the conversation around product vision, goals and KPIs. Understand which features add most value to customer in the shortest time. Competition is fierce and we need to hold customer gaze. Thus, we must remain customer-centric ensuring that features continue to delight, retain and help foster habitual use. Having data ready to support your position helps drive home a higher prioritization of your preferred feature. Once the feature is deployed, monitor and evaluate. Meet with the same stakeholders, present the outcome and gain feedback. Analyze the feedback and iterate if needed.

Let’s assume a non safety-critical situation. For example, a B2C biz model and the project of developing an digital system/app Principle: We must think first about the purpose of the app we are developing, that is the guiding star. Then we can think about the priorities in that given moment. Those are defined by the product owner that report to the Business Head or the board. Still in case of uncertainty or team division against product owner: Facts/data driven is ok… Reliability vs new features is also ok … At the end if not clear rationale is found, even a coin flip is a good tie breaker. If the decision was wrong, we roll-back! Decision principle: Long term, fast iteration, fast and fast experimentation overcomes endless debates.

1. Align goals and objectives. 2. Facilitate open discussions among the stakeholders. 3. Evaluate options using data. 4. Prioritize features using a relevant framework. 5. Communicate decisions repeatedly.

1. Start by a clear and open team discussion and hear the team perspective and concerns. Sometimes you can easily overcome those concerns and you don't need to proceed with other strategies; 2. Re-analyse data from research and customer feedback with the team; 3. Use a priority matrix value driven; 4. Re-prioritize if needed

When your team is split over feature priorities, it's key to find a solution that aligns with overall goals and stakeholder needs. Start by facilitating open discussions so everyone can share their perspectives and reasoning. Next, lean on data-driven insights, using user feedback and analytics to identify which features bring the most value. Finally, create a clear roadmap that outlines timelines and dependencies, helping ensure the team stays aligned and focused.

The team should focus on the original product vision and product roadmap and go back to the customer to see if the original business requirements have changed. The customer and product owner drive the feature priorities. We as the product team should not lean on our own understanding when making key decisions for products. The business owners and customers should drive the vision and we should drive the implementation and provide sound development advice.