And what to do about it.
In the fast-paced world of IoT, shifting priorities too often isn’t agility — it’s chaos.
Frequent changes paralyze delivery, frustrate teams, and erode both customer confidence and market credibility. If you’re in product or tech leadership, you’ve probably seen this movie: context switching every two weeks, projects half-built, engineers demotivated, and go-to-market plans blown up mid-flight.
So how should managers respond when chaos starts to creep in?
Here’s a 7-step strategy that could bring order, discipline, and momentum back into the game if coherent team effort is given.
1️⃣ Diagnose the Root Cause (2–3 weeks)
Before you fix it, understand why priorities keep changing. Is it:
- Executive misalignment or indecision?
- Sales over-promising features?
- No filtering of customer requests?
- Market intel that’s reactive instead of strategic?
🧠 Strong PMs don’t just take orders — they should challenge assumptions and investigate root causes. Well, not every org gives PMs that permission though.
2️⃣ Introduce a Transparent Prioritization Framework
Use a simple but effective prioritization tools aligned to IoT dynamics:
- Customer Impact (revenue, retention)
- Time to Market
- Technical Readiness
- Strategic Fit
- Competitive Pressure
📊 Make this visible across leadership, engineering, and go-to-market teams. No black boxes.
3️⃣ Set Up a Committee
Form a Product & Tech Steering Committee (monthly or whatver fits your need) with:
CTO, Head of Product, PMs, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success
Purpose: ✔️ Review current priorities ✔️ Reconfirm the roadmap ✔️ Only approve changes with trade-off decisions
🛑 Limit the last-minute priority shifts via Slack or email to the bare minimum. This committe should really decide the main valuable things for how a company grow to the next higher level, hence, tech and reveue.
4️⃣ Use a Rolling 3-Level Roadmap
Help leaders zoom out with a Now / Next / Later planning model for roadmap:
- Now: Locked, committed work — no interruptions
- Next: Prioritized and ready, but not yet in-flight
- Later: Ideas under validation or discovery
📍This gives leadership a clear view of capacity and consequences when trade-offs are needed instead of ranking with stars.
5️⃣ Tie Priorities to Market & Competitive Intelligence
Feed the system with real-world inputs:
- “Competitor X is releasing predictive maintenance in Q3 — we must beat them to it.”
- “Customer Z churned due to no OTA updates — this is now Tier-1.”
- “Upcoming EU regulation mandates secure boot — fast-track needed.”
📍 Keep a quarterly Market Heatmap and share insights regularly.
6️⃣ Drive Leadership Discipline
This may be the toughest part — managing up.
- Show the cost of churn: delays, morale issues, lost revenue.
- Offer clear trade-offs, not just resistance: “We can switch, but we’ll delay Feature X by 6 weeks.”
- Speak in executive terms: “This impacts Q3 ARR by $1.2M.”
📣 PMs must speak the language of impact — not just delivery. But if a PM is not given that permission for those data, then, loss is on the company side.
7️⃣ Protect Team Focus and Autonomy
With structure in place, give teams what they need to thrive:
- A clear, stable priority stack
- Protected sprint cycles
- Room to explore and innovate (e.g., hack weeks, 10% time)
🎯 Execution only happens when teams trust the roadmap is real.
🧭 Seven Steps Summary
- Diagnose Instability: Find the true causes of chaos
- Prioritize Transparently: Use data, not gut instinct
- Governance Structure: Approve changes with trade-offs
- Rolling Roadmap: Plan “Now / Next / Later”
- Market Feedback Loop: Inject real competitive urgency
- Executive Buy-In: Show cost of churn, speak impact
- Team Stability: Protect morale and execution capacity
IoT is complex enough without self-inflicted chaos. The best leaders create clarity — not just features.
Structure buys you speed. Prioritization earns you trust. And discipline? That’s how you win.
Leave a Reply