Prioritizing features based on competitive importance

As with many of the columns, Productboard offers on the Features board, the competitor columns ultimately help you answer the question "what should I build next?"

Specifically, competitor columns help you consider to what extent would building this feature help me compete with competitor X, Y, or Z?

While we wouldn't recommend blindly feature-matching your competitors, considering how well their solutions meet the needs of prospective users (in relation to your own) can be a helpful way to ensure your product excels in the marketplace.

Enabling competitor columns

Competitor columns are available on Productboard's Pro plan and can be enabled in workspace settings by an administrator.

Once enabled, the competitor field can be displayed as a column on your boards.
To add competitors to your boards:

• Click the Add columns button, Select Competitors in the menu, and toggle on the competitors you'd like to display.

Using competitor columns

When scoring each feature along a competitor column, you may need to consider a few different factors:

• How important the need is that this feature addresses... (If your target users don't have a need for it, it doesn't matter if competitor X has it! It won't effectively help you compete with them.)
• How marketable the feature is... (In your industry, is this feature considered table-stakes? Do prospects come to you demanding it? Are analysts in your industry saying it's must-have functionality?)
• How well the competitor addresses that need today relative to your product. (If the competitor doesn't have this functionality, mark a feature very important if beating them to market would give you a strong advantage. If the competitor does have this functionality, rate a feature very important if reaching feature parity is critical for remaining competitive.)