How I built a shared scoring model to help leadership weigh product investments by ROI
Contribution
Introduced a shared scoring model to prioritize proposals based on timely business priorities
Role
Led in partnership with product and engineering
Scope
Prioritization level process improvements
Takeaway
Helped leadership maximize ROI across the initiative portfolio
The Challenge
Design proposals weren’t landing—not because they lacked quality, but because they lacked clarity. Leadership struggled to understand the opportunity cost of saying yes. Tradeoffs were buried, assumptions went unstated, and design was seen as opinionated rather than operational. Without a shared tool to measure proposals against current business priorities, design’s input rarely influenced what got built.
My Response
I introduced a shared model to clarify the cost of pursuing one path over another. Working with product leadership, I developed a four-part framework to score investment decisions across User Value, Business Value, Implementation Ease, and Risk Management. This matrix gave teams a way to assess not only what each idea could deliver, but what it would cost the business to say yes. Every initiative had to be weighed against the ROI of what it would displace.
This shifted reviews from creative defense to collaborative prioritization. Each lever grounded the conversation in business priorities: User Value, Business Value, Risk Mitigation, and Implementation Ease. Teams began weighing their options with structured scores, and roadmap discussions became faster, clearer, and less emotional. What used to be subjective critique became confident prioritization.
The Win
Design moved upstream. Stakeholders expected proposals to be framed before priorities were locked—using the four-part model to align user needs and business goals. Prioritization sharpened, and conversations shifted from pitching solutions to clarifying which needs warranted investment.
Design became a strategic contributor by making business impact visible, improving confidence across product and engineering. Teams aligned faster and executed in parallel more efficiently.
Key Outcomes
Prioritization shifted from opinions to structured value-based decisions
Design proposals gained credibility by tying impact to business goals
Roadmap reviews accelerated as scoring clarified investment tradeoffs
Strategic Insight
Design earns lasting influence by clarifying tradeoffs with structured logic:
Business goals become shared benchmarks for investment value
Clear criteria turn subjective opinions into collaborative decisions
Measured impact makes design indispensable to prioritization