Jan Bosch is a research center director, professor, consultant and angel investor in startups. You can contact him at jan@janbosch.com.

Opinion

Strategic digital product management: trade-offs

Reading time: 4 minutes

Failing to prioritize and trade off between various options leads to problems, including low-quality solutions, random prioritization by individuals and the nothing-to-no-one syndrome.

One of my favorite sayings is that you can do anything in life, but not everything. This is sometimes hard to accept as it requires choices as to what not to do. And if there’s one thing most people prioritize, it’s optionality. Making choices that close off paths that were available to us up to now isn’t a popular activity for most.

Companies are, in many ways, similar to humans in that many leaders, when confronted with a choice between A and B, will say that they want both. These leaders don’t want to make the hard choices that are required for a good outcome but instead focus on maintaining optionality. Although understandable from a human nature perspective, this brings many companies in trouble.

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