Prioritization: Loudest Voice vs Largest Value

Your team can build exactly one thing this quarter. Two candidates:

Feature A — an export-to-spreadsheet button. Boring. But your data shows a big share of active users hit the place where it belongs, and support tickets asking for it arrive weekly. Rough build: three weeks.

Feature B — an AI-powered analytics dashboard. Your biggest customer's VP demanded it on a call, your CEO loved the demo mockup, and the sales team says it'll 'change conversations'. Rough build: two months, and nobody has validated that anyone else wants it.

The CEO opens the planning meeting: "Obviously we're doing the dashboard, right?"