Rank a shared roadmap when in-house teams and outside customers compete for capacity

You are the product manager for a product with two kinds of users: teams inside your own company that use it or build on it, and external customers. Both groups send feature requests, and those requests compete for the same engineering capacity. Which prioritization framework would you use for this product, and how would you decide which features get built first? Explain why your framework suits a product with both audiences, and show how it would rank a few example requests. ```hint Find a common currency An internal team is a single requester, but its own product may serve a large number of end customers. Decide what unit lets you compare an internal request with an external one before you pick a scoring formula. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is the product mainly sold to external customers, with internal teams as additional users, or is it an internal platform that is now being opened to outside customers? - Do both audiences share one engineering team and one backlog, or does each have dedicated capacity? - What is the product measured on this year: external adoption and revenue, internal teams' productivity, or both? - Are there commitments already made to either group, such as contract deadlines or internal launch dates that depend on this product? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A named framework, why it fits a product with two audiences, and where it breaks down - A way to put internal and external requests on one scale instead of counting requesters - How non-negotiable work (security, compliance, outages) and time-sensitive commitments are handled alongside scored features - A worked ranking of a few requests, including a case where judgment overrides the score - A transparent process for intake, review and communicating decisions to both audiences ### Follow-up Questions - A senior leader asks you to move their team's request ahead of a higher-scoring external feature. What do you do? - Six months in, how would you know whether your prioritization method is making good decisions? - How would your approach change if the product had served only internal teams until now and was about to open to outside customers?