A "forever" challenge has been our broad product base that stretches our resources very thin.
Lots of integrations, lots of products, each with a dizzying depth of complexity — it's a great challenge for most, yet, the stresses of prioritising our attention across many different areas, in an increasingly competitive market, with growing customer demand, never seem to subside.
Meanwhile, I recently considered our family budget and was reminded of Snowball vs. Avalanche's concepts when dealing with debt. And I immediately saw some parallels with our product prioritisation.
A quick course for those not familiar…
Snowball
With debt, the snowball approach is about selecting the debt with the least remaining to pay. It focuses on putting all you can into that one debt while paying the minimum on your others.
Through this, you build your motivation by paying down your debts with faster feedback and success.
I see parallels in short-term projects within product teams; focusing energy on smaller improvements and refinements. These projects usually last days to weeks, are customer-centric, are incremental, and are typically focused on retention.
The team, business and customers ride a constant buzz of #ship-it, and there's usually a wealth of gratitude from the rapid release cycle.
Avalanche
The Avalanche approach is about prioritising your debt with the highest interest rate — minimising the debt's long-term cost, and, for some, is usually their most enormous debt.
However, motivation takes a bit hit, as the feedback loop is much longer — it may be a year or more until you feel the fruits of your labour.
These are usually the strategic projects or loon-shots taken by product teams. They require more energy, have a longer feedback cycle, and are usually taxing for the team — being harder to see the finish line along the journey due to the scale.
But they're usually rich with innovation, long-term business value and growth.
Our Approach
Our approach has primarily been a pendulum swing from one to the other; Partly from being in a constantly changing market, but mostly due to a small team — where our focus on growth and retention shifts based on annual cycles and market dynamics.
I see our team's sentiments change over time too — either growing weary from the marathon of long, complex projects — or wanting a larger endeavour to sink their teeth into.
It's been rare that we have been able to work on both short-term and long-term projects, usually due to our long-term projects' complexity.
But, as we scale, I hope to strike an ongoing balance for the team's sanity, customer satisfaction, and growth for our business.
Creating snowballs with avalanches and pushing other a metaphors way too far.