The Best Prioritization Is No Prioritization | Stay SaaSy

The article argues that teams spend too much effort debating priorities when the better move is often to avoid prioritization altogether. It says prioritization frameworks are unreliable, the results are hard to prove after the fact, and the process creates costly meetings and friction.

Reading notes

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• Common startup prioritization conflicts include features for current customers versus future differentiation, tech debt versus business features, and choosing among products with different strengths.
• The author says the best way to prioritize is often not to prioritize.
• Product prioritization frameworks such as RICE or Kano are described as weak, assumption-heavy, and close to vibes.
• Prioritization quality cannot really be proven later, so disputes over it often become philosophical and contentious.
• Reprioritization consumes a lot of cognitive effort through planning meetings, spreadsheets, and management overhead.
• One alternative is to build faster, so that the exact choice matters less because the team can test and ship more quickly.
• The article recommends reducing time spent on planning and redirecting that time toward improving build speed, team resourcing, and operating rhythm.
• Faster shipping is presented as something that works in practice and teaches better prioritization than reading more about it.
• Another alternative is to stop making cross-goal tradeoffs by keeping teams in stable lanes.
• With stable teams, decisions become simpler comparisons inside one domain, such as fewer support issues, more customer-requested features, lower cost, or higher reliability.
• The article says this shifts work from prioritization problems to resourcing problems, which are easier to judge and less contentious.
• It gives the example of a small team exploring a new product area for three months instead of constantly reallocating effort.
• Stable teams can make stakeholder communication easier because timelines and ownership are clearer.
• The takeaways are to spend more time building faster and to organize teams so that cross-business prioritization is minimized.