Many product development organizations already understand that iterative feedback is helpful for improving product designs before, during and after release.
However, not all product groups proactively use feedback about development priorities as much as they could. Sometimes, it's tempting to either work off a list that was brainstormed a year or more ago, or simply react to the loudest complaints first.
Instead, for the ImpairmentStudio product, as part of a larger scope of user research I designed a "$100 Test" to let real users decide what would be most important for them, and then reviewed the options with the development team for rough sizing.
By dividing the desirability score by the effort estimate, we were able to find which features would be good investments, using a "desirability matrix".
This helped our release and sprint planning cycles go more quickly, and more importantly, got design a seat at the table with regards to making a visible impact.
Not surprisingly, it also paved the way for product management to request more data-driven insights from UX. Raising our visibility further was good, but the best part is that our users started to get capabilities and improvements that they really wanted, faster.