Choosing Between a Bug Fix and a Feature Request Right After a Pilot Launch

You are the product manager for a product whose pilot has just gone live. Two pieces of work now compete for the team's time: a request for a new feature, and a bug that was discovered after the launch. How would you decide which one to take on first? ```hint Start from what the pilot is for A pilot exists to prove something before a wider launch. Ask which of the two items, left undone, puts that proof at greater risk, and what you would need to know about each to answer. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - How severe is the bug: does it affect security, privacy or data integrity, block a core task, or only degrade the experience? Is there a workaround? - Who is asking for the feature and why: one important pilot customer, many pilot users, or an internal stakeholder? Is it tied to a deadline? - What is the pilot meant to prove, and when is the decision on a wider launch? - Roughly how much engineering effort does each item need, and could the team split capacity between them? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Clarifying the bug's severity and reach, and the feature request's source and urgency, before choosing. - An explicit decision framework tied to the pilot's goals, weighing reach, impact, confidence, effort and risk, with hard overrides such as security or data loss. - Options beyond a strict either-or, such as a quick mitigation, a rollback or a reduced first version of the feature. - A definite pick, with the reason, when the interviewer rules out splitting the work between the two items. - Communicating the decision to whoever's item waits, and revisiting it as pilot data comes in. ### Follow-up Questions - The pilot's largest customer says it will not continue without the feature, while the bug affects a small share of sessions. What do you do? - Engineering estimates that fixing the bug properly takes as long as building the feature. Does that change your decision? - How would you explain the decision to the person whose request you postponed? - Now suppose capacity cannot be split at all: there is a single engineer, or the team can take on only one of the two items. Which one do you pick, and what happens to the other? - Take the pilot away: in an established product, a critical bug competes with a critical feature. How do you compare two items that both carry the label "critical"? - Engineering is pushing to fix the bug while sales is pushing for the feature to win a deal. How do you decide, and how do you bring both teams along with the decision? - Tell me about a time you had to choose between fixing a bug and building a feature. What did you choose, how did you decide, and how did it turn out?