Product Prioritization: Value vs. Risk

Measuring the tradeoffs between value and risk.

Welcome to ‘Product Prioritization’ — a series of tools, tips, and best practices for the skilled Product Manager to determine priorities and get results. Each time, I’ll highlight one of the dozens of popular methodologies and explain how to use it.

One way to prioritize ideas or features is to compare the Value to something else. If you haven’t yet, you’ll likely run into this where Value is compared to Cost.

Risk can be an impactful, and often an underrepresented factor when you’re trying to establish which ideas or features should be actioned and which ones shouldn’t.

What is Value vs. Risk?

First, define Value and Risk. This helps align everyone when they think about scoring it.

• Value: This is situational, but ‘value’ could be user value, strategic value, OKR impact, etc.
• Risk: Cost. Think about this from a time and materials perspective.
• Risk: Functionality. Can we actually do what we want to? Is there a risk that even if we try, we might not be able to do it?
• Risk: Schedule. Will it be done when we need it to be done?