Does this sound familiar? As a product manager, you’ve finally got a groomed backlog that aligns with the product vision and roadmap. Teams are cranking away and delivering. Everything is on track and then it happens—some unplanned work pops up that is deemed URGENT by someone outside your department. All eyes are on you to set the priority—do you have the tools to do it?

1. Setting Priorities:
How to Balance Planned vs. Unplanned Work

2. Brought to you by The Product Stack, a group of like-minded organizations
that offer practical solutions for modern product teams. Our quest is to shine
a light on the challenges everyday product teams face and offer up real
advice and solutions that address these challenges head on.
Join the conversation at www.TheProductStack.com.

3. Jim Semick
Co-Founder,
ProductPlan
Today’s Panel
Teresa Torres
Product Coach, Founder,
Product Talk
Submit questions at anytime during the webinar!
Kevin Steigerwald
VP Products and UX,
Jama Software
Aloka Penmetcha
Director of Product
Management,
Pivotal Labs

4. Poll: How many years have you been involved
in the product planning process?

5. Agenda
1. Best practices on defining planned work
2. Techniques to handle unplanned work
3. Live QA
Submit questions at any time during the webinar!

10. Proactive work
● Product outcomes
● Iterating on existing features
● Operational efficiency - Tech debt, reducing customer support tickets
Reactive work
● Support escalations, emergency outages
● Feature requests coming in sideways

12. The framework
● Prioritize Product outcomes for the next quarter
● Reflect on operational efficiency - engineering and team efficiency
● Build roadmap

17. ● Impacts our ability to deliver on the roadmap
● It’s difficult to communicate impact to stakeholders.
● It’s unpredictable and can lead to unsustainable work

24. Poll: How do you currently handle
unplanned work that pops up?

30. Squeeze it Backlog it Carry it
Swap it Buffer it

31. ● Improve your prioritization process
● Improve the quality of application
● Free up capacity by removing dependencies
● Team structure

32. Poll: How frequently do you communicate your
roadmap with other parts of your company?

33. How do we communicate changes?

34. Live Q & A
Continue the conversation at www.TheProductStack.com
Find us at:
www.producttalk.org
www.productplan.com
www.pivotaltracker.com
www.jamasoftware.com

35. Thank You.
Continue the conversation at www.TheProductStack.com
Find us at:
www.producttalk.org
www.productplan.com
www.pivotaltracker.com
www.jamasoftware.com