Was there a time when you disagreed with the manager's decision? How did it play out, and what happened in the end?

While diasgreements are part and parcel of life as a product manager, the end result should always be to either convince, get convinced or disagree and commit.

The situation was that I was working on a big project to introduce a feature 'X' in my product. It was a time-bound project and we were running against time to get it executed. The disagreement I had with my boss was with respect to scope and prioritization of certain features within the scope. My boss wanted me to skip a certain UI/UX related change (Feature A) which according to me was core part of the experience of the project and instead pick up an additional new feature (Feature B). The challenge was that it was hard to objectively estimate the impact of UI/UX related feature which I was pushing but for the feature he was suggesting, the impact calculation was relatively straight forward. At this juncture, he left the decision on me.

The task I had was to ensure that we 1. Roll-out the 'best' product for consumers in the time we had 2. Somehow define the importance and impact of the UI/UX feature to make the decision more objective 3. Align and convince my boss

The first action I took was to see if I could somehow evaluate the impact of feature I was suggesting. While it wasn't possible to do it objectively and I took the consumer survey route to atleast have some subjective data points. Out of 10 users we surveyed, 8 users said that the feature A excited them and they will play more if that feature is launched. I then had a discussion with my engineering team and figure out that it wouldn't have been possible  to do the feature-B fully in the given timelines. So it was clear that we will have to build the MVP of the feature B and it's impact would be lower than what we had anticipated. Thirdly, working with engineering, I figured out the high-level plan by when that feature would be implemented. Lastly, for the feature I was pushing for, after user surveys I was able to scope it down a little bit.

With above information, I set up a meeting with him and walked him through the plan. Unlike the last time, I now had evidence of the impact of both the features and that helped us align on the impact of the features. Secondly, since I had redeuced the scope of my feature because of consumer surveys, he was happy that the decision was on the basis of end consumers. Thirdly, since I had the plan ready, it provided him with the visibility of the feature he was pushing for.

By the end of it we committed to the plan I had and feature launches happened in the order I suggested. We saw impact of both the features. The feature-A impacted much larger segment of people (reach was higher) but impact was lesser whereas the feature-B impacted lesser number of people but the impact was higher.