How to decide what to make next

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How do you decide which product or service to add next?

How do you decided what to make next?

Over the last few decades, I've probably launched 500 products and services. And I don't think I've ever seen anyone talk about how organizations go about deciding what to make and what to shelve. How do you decide where to invest your scarce people and promotional resources?

If there's anything that can have a significant impact on you and your team, it's this decision. If marketing is the product, then choosing which product to market is your most important moment. Here are some of the reasons I've used (and have seen others use) to make this decision. Go ahead and add your own.

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How to decide what to make next

How do you decide which product or service to add next?

Get great advice on programming

What to do next?

Here are the top reasons (add your own)

1

I love it

2

It will be fun

3

4

It is something a major customer wants

5

It's important to our community or society

6

My customer asked me to do this.

7

It's unique.

8

It will increase sales of our other products

9

It survived our ungodly long and undisciplined development process.

10

It's cool.

11

It solves a real problem for a large market

12

Sometimes you just have no choice...

13

I haven't done something new lately and I am bored

14

Someone with a lot of power and authority in the organization really wants it

15

It's the next logical item

16

It will burnish our reputation

17

It adds a feature that our CEO really, really wants

18

It will increase traffic to our site

19

I can sell it to customer X

20

Our current stuff doesn't meet regulations and this does

21

A key employee is bored and this will keep them busy

22

It's easy

23

It will increase our margins

24

It puts our competition on the defensive

25

This is a solution to a problem I have seen many times

26

It's good for the planet

27

Because someone, somewhere might actually want to pay us for it

28

Someone has to do it so it might as well be us

29

This line extension will add market share to our core product line.

30

It's a short term cash cow

31

It is something our technology can do easily

32

If we don't do it, our competition will

33

It appeals to our competition's base, thus growing our market share

34

It locks in our base, making it less likely they'll be stolen by the competition

35

We didn't launch this one last time, so its turn has come around

36

It will make us look smart

37

It responds to an RFP

38