Managing conflicting priorities

Conflicting priorities are inevitable when multiple stakeholders have different goals. Sales wants features for the big prospect. Engineering wants to fix technical debt. Customer success needs bugs fixed. As a PM, you're often caught in the middle, trying to balance competing demands.

You can then use frameworks like RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) or value vs. effort matrices to make decisions objective. When conflicts arise, refer back to these shared criteria to guide discussions. The key is creating transparent prioritization criteria that stakeholders agree on upfront, based on a clearly defined product vision and product strategy. These, in turn, should align with the company’s overall vision and strategy and be accepted by all stakeholders.

When you must disappoint a stakeholder, acknowledge their priority's importance and explain the tradeoff clearly. Show them when their priority might be addressed. Sometimes you can find creative compromises that partially address multiple needs. Document these decisions so you're not rehashing the same debates repeatedly.