Tell me about a time when you changed your decision in a meeting based on inputs from your stakeholders. What was the situation? Why did you make the original decision? What convinced you to change your decision?

As a product manager, I constantly am in touch with several stakeholders, talking to them about the roadmaps and prioritized items so that I can keep getting their feedback and keep track of their requirements. I have come across a few instances where such meetings have altered the list of backlog items and/or the prioritization of the same.

One such instance was during a biweekly meeting with the product marketing team where I was presenting the plan for the backlog which was to be picked by the development team in the next quarter. This was a properly vetted plan in accordance with the inputs that I had received from the business team and the other stakeholders. The selected items were high on the revenue that the feature would generate vs the effort required to develop the same.

During the meeting, the product marketing team expressed their concerns regarding the 3 month-long timelines of the selected backlog as there was a competitor feature due next month that had the potential to poach our customers.

With this new information at my disposal, I re-evaluated the set of features to be developed and the effort needed to develop an in-house feature to safeguard our existing customers against the competition. It turned out to be a small development on top of our existing product offering and it would help us retain our customers. Due to this, we decided to have an all-stakeholders meeting where we discussed prioritizing this small feature by undertaking a small release and hitting the market with the same before the competitor does. According to the new plan, this could be done in 20 days after which we could resume the development of the earlier planned backlog. This proposal was accepted by the stakeholders and we were able to pull off both the releases in the stipulated time.