Portfolio Prioritization

---
name: portfolio-prioritization
description: Prioritize a portfolio of product bets by strategic fit, customer value, evidence, opportunity cost, dependencies, risk, capacity, and learning rather than ranking isolated feature scores.
---
# Portfolio Prioritization

Use when several product initiatives compete for limited organizational attention or investment.

## Procedure
1. Define the planning horizon, strategic objectives, hard commitments, capacity constraints, and portfolio-level risks.
2. Express each initiative as an outcome or bet with target segment, expected value, evidence, cost range, dependencies, and major uncertainty.
3. Identify interactions among bets: shared foundations, mutual exclusion, sequencing, cannibalization, platform leverage, or learning that changes later decisions.
4. Compare initiatives using consistent criteria while resisting false precision from weighted scores whose inputs are mostly guesses.
5. Balance near-term value, strategic capability, risk reduction, exploration, and mandatory work according to the actual strategy.
6. Model opportunity cost explicitly: choosing one initiative consumes capacity that cannot serve another.
7. Build a portfolio that fits realistic capacity and leaves room for uncertainty rather than filling every team to theoretical 100% utilization.
8. Record priority rationale and trigger conditions that would justify reordering the portfolio.

## Decision rules
- Portfolio priority is not the sum of individual feature scores.
- Dependencies and strategic leverage can change the value of a sequence.
- Reserve capacity for uncertainty and operational reality.
- Reprioritize when evidence or strategy changes materially, not every time a stakeholder speaks loudly.

## Quality gate
The portfolio is ready when the selected set fits real capacity, strategic and customer value are balanced with risk and learning, opportunity costs and dependencies are visible, and each priority has a rationale and evidence-based trigger for reconsideration.