Dealing with Feature Requests

As a product manager you are usually the recipient of countless feature requests. Feature requests may arrive per email, support systems, phone etc. They just keep coming…

One common mistake is to try give feedback or even worse take decisions (yes we are…, no we are not…, we are not sure yet) without understanding the actual underlying problem.

• What is the user trying to do?
• Is this the best way to do it?
• How important is this? Is this a showstopper?
• Until when can we survive without this feature?

Normal users neither have the skills, nor the time, nor the necessary internal information (e.g., roadmap) in order to formulate feature requests that can be directly translated in development tasks.

Therefore, you must always try to reach the feature request issue in order to gain a better understanding of the situation. This will almost always save you and your team a lot of time and create a more personal communication with the customer.