Product leaders almost always come to us with a scarcity perspective on their work.
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“We never have enough capacity.”
“If only our team were bigger.”
“I wish we could hire faster.”
This is why prioritization is so painful for nearly every product team. There’s so much more to do than there is capacity to do it.
And if you accept that framing, the physics of product development make that dilemma unbreakable. Because it takes orders of magnitude less energy to request something than to fulfill that request.
But what if it didn’t have to be that way?
What becomes possible if we assume abundance?
“We have enough capacity to make a meaningful impact for our customers and stakeholders.”
(I know. That probably doesn’t feel true for you, but hold onto that assumption for just a moment.)
Now, the questions change. If we already have enough but we’re not seeing the impact we want, we can start asking…
- What’s the unique contribution we’re here to make? (i.e., who’s our customer and what outcome do we want to create for them that’s only possible if we collaborate to make it happen?)
- Where are we wasting our capacity on things that don’t create impact? (e.g., waiting on dependencies, producing documentation nobody reads, sitting in unproductive meetings)
- Where do we have untapped capacity? (e.g., people with skills they’re not using in their work, teams who are disengaged and demotivated)
- Where are we focusing on the wrong things? (e.g., serving the loudest voice instead of spending our capacity strategically, starting everything so we can tell all our stakeholders “yes”)
Those questions generate possibility. They create energy.
Of course, you may eventually want to increase your capacity so you can have a bigger impact. But if you do it after asking these questions and implementing the answers, you’ll be adding capacity to a healthy system instead of a broken one.
Go Deeper
If prioritization feels painful and your team has struggled with more to do than there is capacity to do it, you’re not alone. In our Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) and Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner (A-CSPO) trainings, you’ll gain the skills and confidence to navigate complexity, focus on what truly matters, and drive meaningful outcomes. Register now to join one of our upcoming workshops!
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