Prioritization

Throughout this chapter, we've used the terms features and Product Backlog items to explain the different units of work that we capture through Discovery and prioritize and decide which to work on first in the Options Pivot. An important clarification that's needed is that this does not just mean functional features. We are not just deciding which shiny new feature the end users are going to get next. We need to balance customer value against risk mitigation; we need to balance functional against non-functional work. We do that by balancing research, experimentation, and implementation.

Value versus Risk

When we prioritize Product Backlog items, we are relatively assessing all options available to us. That does include new features we're going to implement. It also includes defects and problems in production that need to be fixed. It includes non-functional improvements to the architecture to make future development and operations simpler and stronger...