How to Prioritize Feature Requests: A Complete Guide for Product Teams

Every product team faces the same challenge: too many feature requests and not enough time. Your users want everything, your stakeholders have opinions, and your backlog keeps growing. How do you decide what to build next?

The Problem with "Loudest Voice Wins"

Many teams fall into the trap of building whatever feature gets requested the most or whoever shouts the loudest. This approach leads to:

• Building features that don't move the needle
• Frustrating your most valuable customers
• Wasting engineering resources
• A bloated product that tries to do everything

A Better Framework for Prioritization

1. Understand the Business Impact

Not all features are created equal. Before adding anything to your roadmap, ask:

• Revenue potential: Will this feature help acquire new customers or retain existing ones?
• Cost of not building: What happens if you never build this?
• Strategic alignment: Does this move you toward your product vision?

2. Consider Customer Value

Who is asking for this feature matters as much as what they're asking for:

• Customer segment: Are these your target customers or edge cases?
• Revenue contribution: What's the MRR of customers requesting this?
• Frequency: Is this a one-off request or a pattern?

3. Evaluate Effort and Risk

Be realistic about what it takes to ship:

• Development time: How long will this actually take?
• Technical complexity: Does this require new infrastructure?
• Maintenance burden: What's the ongoing cost of this feature?

Popular Prioritization Frameworks

RICE Scoring

RICE stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. Score each feature and divide:

1RICE Score = (Reach x Impact x Confidence) / Effort

Value vs. Effort Matrix

Plot features on a 2x2 matrix:

• Quick wins: High value, low effort - do these first
• Big bets: High value, high effort - plan carefully
• Fill-ins: Low value, low effort - do when you have time
• Money pits: Low value, high effort - avoid these

MRR-Weighted Prioritization

Weight feature requests by the monthly recurring revenue of customers requesting them. A feature requested by customers paying $10,000/month should rank higher than one requested by customers paying $100/month.

Common Prioritization Mistakes

1. Ignoring Silent Customers

The customers who complain loudest aren't always your best customers. Your most valuable users might be too busy to submit feature requests - reach out to them proactively.

2. Building for Edge Cases

It's tempting to build features for specific customer requests, but ask yourself: will this benefit 80% of users or just this one account?

3. Letting the Backlog Grow Forever

A backlog with 500 items is useless. Regularly prune requests that are no longer relevant. If something has been sitting for a year, it's probably not important.

4. Not Validating Before Building

Before committing engineering resources, validate demand:

• Talk to customers who requested it
• Create mockups and gather feedback
• Consider building a minimal version first

Putting It Into Practice

Here's a simple process to implement today:

1. Collect: Gather all feature requests in one place
2. Categorize: Group by theme and customer segment
3. Score: Apply a consistent scoring framework
4. Validate: Talk to customers before committing
5. Communicate: Share your roadmap and reasoning

Conclusion

Prioritization isn't about saying "no" - it's about saying "yes" to the right things. By using data-driven frameworks and understanding the true value of each request, you can build a product that delights customers and drives business growth.

The best product teams don't just build features. They build the right features.