{"id":8221,"date":"2020-06-11T11:56:34","date_gmt":"2020-06-11T10:56:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/?post_type=pp_customer_story&#038;p=8221"},"modified":"2022-10-24T13:39:51","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T12:39:51","slug":"everstring","status":"publish","type":"pp_customer_story","link":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/customer-stories\/everstring\/","title":{"rendered":"Everstring"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-the-process-everstring-uses-to-prioritize-its-product-backlog-in-prodpad\">The process Everstring uses to prioritize its&nbsp;product backlog in ProdPad<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Ajay Dawar has an ongoing executive order at Everstring, where he serves as Global VP of Product:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><em>\u201cIgnore what the ideas are. Focus on what the ideas will do for our customers.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Ajay has no shortage of ideas. At a company of 150, his backlog is always full with suggestions from sales, marketing, support, engineering and his own product team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Ajay, the challenge has always been getting all those people to agree on what the most important thing is to work on next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s very hard to get 6 people into a room and look at 600 ideas and get 6 people to agree on that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But with ProdPad, Ajay has found a way to narrow hundreds of ideas down to a few high-impact decisions rather than lots of little inconsequential ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ajay plans a solid 90-day release with the entire company\u2019s input with ProdPad \u2013 and without dragging everyone into a room to debate a long list of feature requests.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tag every idea with themes and business goals<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Everyone at the company drops their ideas in a single idea backlog in ProdPad. In the first round, Ajay and his product team sort through and apply each of these three tags to each idea:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>EXTERNAL<\/strong>&nbsp;(what can we communicate outside the company)<\/li><li><strong>INTERNAL<\/strong>&nbsp;(what internal goals will this help us reach?)<\/li><li><strong>VALUE<\/strong>&nbsp;(what value will this create for the customer?)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe biggest value for me is tagging. If I couldn\u2019t tag with ProdPad, this process wouldn\u2019t exist,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then he moves it into a spreadsheet that no one gets to look at \u2013 yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-choose-the-most-important-thing-to-solve-for-the-next-release\">Choose the most important thing to solve for the next release<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Each 90-day release revolves around a single theme. Without reaching for the backlog, ProdPad or anything, Ajay asks the head of each team plus the exec team this question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>\u201cIn the next 90 days, what\u2019s the most important thing for us?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the hardest part because it can only be one thing, says Ajay. Increasing revenues? Acquiring customers? Up-selling our existing customer base?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They debate and discuss, and then decide on what one problem is worth focusing on for the next 90 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-filter-for-ideas-that-fall-under-that-theme\">Filter for ideas that fall under that theme<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Ajay is no longer considering the full backlog, just the ones in that fall under that one theme. For example, if they agree that their #1 challenge is to improve customer satisfaction, he\u2019ll filter for that were tagged as \u201cimprove customer satisfaction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That narrows down the list from hundreds of ideas to a few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-stack-rank-those-ideas-by-impact-vs-effort\">Stack rank those ideas by&nbsp;impact vs. effort<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIdeas themselves are useless. ProdPad helps us make a decision based on what they do for for our customers and for us as a company,\u201d says Ajay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The PM team will work with the engineering team and decide which of those ideas will have the biggest impact and biggest improvements to their customers\u2019 experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By this time, he can approve those final decisions himself, because the teams had already signed off on what theme and which ideas were important to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAt that&nbsp;point it\u2019s more of an FYI,\u201d says Ajay.&nbsp;The product team finalizes the specs and pushes them over to development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is inherently a lot of friction in the process when you\u2019re dealing with hundreds of ideas. I use ProdPad to narrow down those down to themes, so I can discuss with stakeholders what we want to accomplish, or what problem we want to solve next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":8218,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"pp_customer_story_meta":{"logo":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/logo-everstring.svg","hero_content":"How Everstring\u2019s product team decides what to work on next","hero_bg":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/hero-everstring-scaled.jpg","contact_title":"Ajay Dawar","contact_desc":"Global VP of Product"}},"pp_uni_tag":[],"class_list":["post-8221","pp_customer_story","type-pp_customer_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.4 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Everstring | A ProdPad Customer Story | ProdPad<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Read how Everstring\u2019s product team decides what to work on next and the process Everstring uses to prioritize its product backlog in ProdPad.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/customer-stories\/everstring\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Everstring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The process Everstring uses to prioritize its&nbsp;product backlog in ProdPad Ajay Dawar has an ongoing executive order at Everstring, where he serves as\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/customer-stories\/everstring\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"ProdPad\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ProdPad\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-10-24T12:39:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/featured-everstring.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@prodpad\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Everstring | A ProdPad Customer Story | ProdPad","description":"Read how Everstring\u2019s product team decides what to work on next and the process Everstring uses to prioritize its product backlog in ProdPad.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/customer-stories\/everstring\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Everstring","og_description":"The process Everstring uses to prioritize its&nbsp;product backlog in ProdPad Ajay Dawar has an ongoing executive order at Everstring, where he serves as","og_url":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/customer-stories\/everstring\/","og_site_name":"ProdPad","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ProdPad\/","article_modified_time":"2022-10-24T12:39:51+00:00","og_image":[{"width":720,"height":720,"url":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/featured-everstring.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_site":"@prodpad","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/customer-stories\/everstring\/","url":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/customer-stories\/everstring\/","name":"Everstring | A ProdPad Customer Story | ProdPad","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/customer-stories\/everstring\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/customer-stories\/everstring\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/featured-everstring.jpg","datePublished":"2020-06-11T10:56:34+00:00","dateModified":"2022-10-24T12:39:51+00:00","description":"Read how Everstring\u2019s product team decides what to work on next and the process Everstring uses to prioritize its product backlog in ProdPad.","inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/customer-stories\/everstring\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/customer-stories\/everstring\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/featured-everstring.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/featured-everstring.jpg","width":720,"height":720,"caption":"Everstring"},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/","name":"ProdPad","description":"Product Management Software","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/#organization","name":"ProdPad","url":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/blue-full.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/blue-full.png","width":2050,"height":400,"caption":"ProdPad"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ProdPad\/","https:\/\/x.com\/prodpad","https:\/\/instagram.com\/prodpad","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/prodpad\/","https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCXHOx5Ed-6sHPujypIlhdMA"]}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pp_customer_story\/8221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pp_customer_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/pp_customer_story"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"pp_uni_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pp_uni_tag?post=8221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}