<aside> 💡 Avoid getting coerced by the gut feel of HIPPOs Don't succumb blindly to "Urgent" Change Requests by business stakeholders Never Look at features/product improvements in isolation decoupled from NSM

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At HealthAssure, we had a situation in May-August 2020 where, as per our product roadmap, we had few items which were due to be picked. The prioritization was done using two methods:

• Impact - Effort estimate with reach assumptions to give it a quantitative flavor
• DVF framework
• Strategic Goals - North Star metric of increasing active users (60% of HA customers were dormant. They had done one consultation months back or had just made their profile). A Secondary metric was increasing ARPAU (average revenue per active user)

The following were the major items in priority order (on the degree of earlier quarterly prioritization I'd done).

1. My Health Records which allows current users to upload their reports, prescriptions digitally (HIPAA compliant)

2. CoVID symptom checker - a chatbot solution that can act as a good funneling tool amidst a massive surge of tele-doctor calls. This would allow first-level screening and instant recommendations to users helping them make informed decisions.

3. Pharmacy Ecommerce - third party API integration with a leading physical pharmacy chain which would allow HA customers to place medicine pickup and delivery options

4. Referral Program to acquire new users

We were amidst CoVID peak and bulk of our resources were involved on platform optimization and CoVID test booking product iterations. Therefore, we had scope of 1 new feature to be picked up for the next couple of sprints.

Different stakeholders had different asks.

<aside> 💡 Investors had hinted in the last board meeting to expedite referral programs - chasing acquisition numbers but the CEO was now concerned with overt spending with tough times. So it was more than likely to remain last of our worries.

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<aside> 💡 Pharmacy Ecommerce on the surface good seemed good. It would give HA an additional revenue stream. Lockdowns had left people venturing out lesser and lesser - even for essentials. Sales had a good tie-up in place and wanted us to push through as we had pushed the item back in the previous sprint cycles as well.

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<aside> 💡 Symptom Checker was a smart solution. There were ready made providers and many competitive apps had recently incorporated it. There was an air of FOMO. It had come up often in the last few meetings with our medical network and customer success team who had cited the increase in customer call drops with our tele docs. On surface, this was attributed to more calls, less doctors.

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Before the sprint planning, as a Product Owner, I went back to the drawing board and did a reevaluation of prioritization. I had already done this as part of the quarterly roadmap. I re-estimated the impact, effort, and reach basis of the new resource constraints. We had also been afforded, 2 new contractual developers. The Scores did change but the hierarchy did not.

To make sure I was well covered, I looked at some adoption reports of chatbots in the health space. I had to do this as since the last time I did the analysis, the product had gone through wide acceptance and I wished to have more dated data. I could not afford fresh customer research but even some solid secondary research would help.

Research and discussions with our in-house doctors revealed that the recommendations made by such chatbots yield even more confusion to users. They still like hearing from the doctor. This rendered my confidence in the success of this feature was low. I adjusted my prioritization model.