Each week I scour articles, wading through the dogs, and bringing you the best insights to help product managers, developers, and innovators be heroes.

RICE method – simple prioritization for product managers. Building a product roadmap requires feature set prioritization – the features that provide the most value to customers. A scorecard is a useful tool and RICE method provides the criteria to score: reach, impact, confidence, effort. Read the details at https://blog.intercom.io/rice-simple-prioritization-for-product-managers/

4 traps that hinder collaborative innovation in B2B companies. (1) Acting as an event manager, (2) Defining the problem statement alone, (3) Ignoring divergence in time horizons, and (4) Speaking different corporate languages. Read the details at HBR https://hbr.org/2016/03/why-b2b-companies-struggle-with-collaborative-innovation

What it’s like being a tech product manager at Pivotal Labs. Heddy Stern shares her journey from college student in economics to tech internship to tech product manager. She describes her work as a product manager, creating user stories and trying to stay ahead of development 2-3 weeks so they always have features to code. Read more at http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2016/03/10/pivotal-labs-on-how-to-become-a-product-manager/

U.S. government adds innovation labs. We know the companies have been embracing innovation labs and now the government is getting on the band wagon. The focus appears to be improving acquisitions and the use of IT. The article implies that “innovation lab” is not accurate, but at least the government is thinking more in innovative terms. Read what details there are at http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/acquisition/policy/2016/03/10/omb-all-agency-acquisitions-get-innovation-labs-may-2/81584770/

5 questions to ask when outsourcing application development. (1) How do you structure the partnership roles to be efficient and successful? (2) How skilled and researched is your development team with UX design? (3) What are the features, services and skills that set your company apart from your competitors or independent consultants? (4) Can I see samples of your work with a client or have a client’s contact info to request a testimonial? (5) What will ongoing support be like after my application/product has been created? Read about each at http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2016/03/11/5-questions-outsourcing-application-development.html

Companies are missing opportunities for radical innovation. This is a helpful article in Forbes by Joe McKendrick that describes why companies prefer incremental innovation to radical innovation and how they can build their radical innovation muscles. Read it at http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2016/03/10/taking-digital-to-the-next-level-from-incrementalism-to-disruptive-innovation/#62f3c99b6316

Why you should eliminate your chief innovation officer. While I disagree with the title of this article, it contains two important points: innovation is not one person’s job in an organization, and to get everyone innovating specific steps can be taken. Now, let’s see who could lead the charge for making that happen – oh, perhaps the Chief Innovation Officer! Read for yourself at http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgebradt/2016/03/16/why-you-should-eliminate-your-chief-innovation-officer/2/#6b9e861c3e1b