Project Overview & Headline

 

This case study details the creation and implementation of a company-wide product feature prioritization framework at Solaris. During a period of rapid growth with countless feature requests from sales, marketing, and partners, this initiative replaced ad-hoc decision-making with a structured, data-driven process. The framework was adopted by the C-suite as their primary decision template, ensuring engineering resources were always focused on the highest-impact initiatives.​

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The Context & Challenge

 

As an early-stage company experiencing rapid success, Solaris was flooded with new ideas and feature requests from every direction—newly signed partners, the growing sales team, and internal product visionaries. While this enthusiasm was a sign of health, it created a significant operational challenge.

 

Without a formal system, the product roadmap was at risk of being driven by subjective factors: the most recent customer request, the loudest voice in the room, or reactive gut feelings. This led to:

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• Internal Friction: A growing sense of frustration between commercial and technical teams, with a lack of transparency into why certain features were chosen over others.

• Resource Misallocation: A high risk of investing precious engineering time into features that were not aligned with the company's core strategic objectives.

• Lack of Leadership Clarity: It was difficult for the C-level to get a clear, objective overview of all potential initiatives and make confident, defensible roadmap decisions.
   

The challenge was to create a single source of truth - a fair, transparent, and objective system that the entire organization could use to prioritize product development.

 

The Process & The Role

 

A methodical, four-phase process was undertaken to design, build, and embed this new operational framework into the company's DNA, moving from initial discovery to full company-wide adoption.

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Phase 1: Research & Stakeholder Alignment

 

The project began with internal and external research. This involved analyzing established prioritization models (like RICE and Kano) to understand best practices. Crucially, this was followed by in-depth interviews with stakeholders across every department - including Sales, Partner Management, Customer Support, and Engineering - to understand their frustrations, needs, and goals for a new system.

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Phase 2: Designing the Prioritization Framework

 

Based on the research and stakeholder input, a hybrid prioritization framework was designed specifically for the company's B2B BaaS model. The framework required each new feature request to be scored against a set of weighted criteria:

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• Strategic Alignment: How well does this feature support our quarterly business objectives (OKRs)?

• Partner & Revenue Impact: What is the potential new revenue, or how many key partners will this unblock?

• Customer Value: How many end-users does this impact, and how significant is the problem it solves?

• Engineering Effort: How complex is this to build (estimated using a T-shirt sizing model: S, M, L, XL)?
   

A standardized "Feature Request Template" was also created to ensure all ideas were submitted with the same level of detail and business justification, allowing for fair, apples-to-apples comparisons.

 

Phase 3: Technical Implementation & Tooling

 

With the framework designed, the next step was to integrate it into daily workflows. The framework was built directly into the company's existing product management tools (e.g., Jira). This technical implementation ensured that the new process was not just a theoretical document but a practical, interactive tool that the product and engineering teams could use seamlessly.

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Phase 4: Company-Wide Rollout & Adoption

 

A framework is only valuable if it is understood and used by everyone. The final phase was managed as a dedicated change management project.

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• Communication & Training: A company-wide presentation and training session was conducted to roll out the new process, explaining the "why" behind the change and how to use the new system effectively.

• Embedding the Process: To fully embed the framework into the company's rhythm, a new "Product Council" meeting was established. In this meeting, leadership would review the prioritized list, using the framework as their official decision-making template to drive discussion and make final roadmap commitments.
   

The Results & Impact

 

The implementation of the framework had a profound and lasting impact on the company's operational efficiency and strategic focus.

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• Brought Objectivity to a Subjective Process: Replaced emotional, "loudest voice" decision-making with a transparent, data-driven system, significantly reducing internal friction and debate over the roadmap.

• Created Strategic Alignment Across the Company: Ensured that engineering efforts were consistently focused on features that directly supported key business objectives, maximizing the ROI of development time.

• Empowered All Departments to Contribute Effectively: Gave teams like Sales and Marketing a clear, structured channel to submit well-reasoned ideas, making them feel heard and valued in the product development process.

• Provided C-Level with Unprecedented Clarity: The framework served as a powerful decision-making template for leadership, giving them a clear and defensible rationale for every addition to the product roadmap.

• Improved Predictability and Transparency: The entire company gained visibility into the product pipeline and the "why" behind prioritization, which improved morale and fostered stronger cross-functional collaboration.