Introduced a consistent way to prioritise the flow of improvement ideas coming into the European digital platform, and connected prioritised ideas to visible delivery tracking across 18 markets and three product divisions.
→ 18 markets and 3 product divisions running one consistent idea-prioritisation model, connected to visible delivery tracking.
Problem
Honda's European digital platform, covering Automobiles, Motorcycles and Power across 18 markets, had plenty of ideas for improvement coming in from markets, agencies, and internal teams, but no consistent way to prioritise them or assess which would actually benefit the most users or internal teams. Even where an idea was agreed as worth doing, there was no clear, visible connection between that decision and when or whether it actually got delivered.
Context
I was managing the European digital platform across all three product divisions. Ideas weren't in short supply, if anything there were too many, arriving from markets, agencies, and internal stakeholders faster than anyone could weigh them against each other. What was missing was a consistent way to compare them and a visible thread from an agreed idea through to delivery.
Business objective
Give the platform a structured way to prioritise the ideas already coming in, based on the value each would deliver to users and internal teams, and connect that prioritisation directly to what delivery teams were actually building.
Customer/user objective
Markets and internal stakeholders submitting ideas needed to see them assessed on a consistent basis, not accepted or ignored depending on who asked loudest. They also needed to see whether an idea they'd raised was actually moving, not just logged and forgotten.
Constraints
The backlog of ideas already existed and was growing, so any new process had to absorb what was already there rather than starting from a clean slate. It also had to work across all 18 markets and three product divisions at once, since there was no smaller pilot group to test on first.
Stakeholders
Market teams and internal stakeholders submitting ideas, delivery teams who needed a prioritised backlog they could actually plan against, and senior stakeholders who needed visibility that agreed priorities were genuinely being delivered.
Research and discovery
I mapped where ideas were currently coming from and how, if at all, they got assessed. There was no single intake point and no consistent scoring, ideas were judged informally, often by whoever raised them having the most influence in the room, and there was no reliable way to trace a prioritised idea through to a delivery date.
Options considered
One option was a lighter-touch prioritisation exercise run periodically, a workshop every quarter to rank the backlog. I considered this against introducing a structured, ongoing discovery and prioritisation tool. I chose the tooling route, since a periodic workshop wouldn't have solved the second half of the problem, the disconnect between a prioritised idea and its actual delivery.
Prioritisation
Getting a consistent intake and scoring model in place came first, since nothing else would matter if ideas kept arriving and getting judged inconsistently. Connecting that scoring to visible delivery tracking followed once the intake side was working.
Delivery
I introduced Jira Product Discovery as the single intake and prioritisation point for ideas from markets, agencies, and internal stakeholders, scored on a consistent basis so ideas could be compared against each other rather than judged in isolation. I connected prioritised ideas to Advanced Roadmaps so there was a visible, traceable line from an agreed idea through to its place in the delivery plan, across all 18 markets and three product divisions.
Decisions made
The most consequential decision was to solve intake and delivery visibility together rather than sequentially. A prioritisation model on its own would have told the business what mattered most but not whether it was actually happening, connecting the two was what made the framework trustworthy.
Trade-offs
Standing up a formal intake and scoring process took more time upfront than continuing to handle ideas informally, and slowed down a handful of requests that would previously have been actioned on request. I judged that worthwhile, since the alternative was a backlog that kept growing without any consistent basis for what got done.
Business outcome
Ideas from across 18 markets and three product divisions now go through a single, consistent prioritisation model, and stakeholders can see exactly where a prioritised idea sits in the delivery plan rather than losing visibility once it's agreed.
Customer outcome
Markets and internal stakeholders can see their ideas assessed on the same basis as everyone else's, and can track whether something they raised is actually moving through delivery.
Lessons learned
A prioritisation model only earns trust if people can see what happens after their idea is scored, visibility into delivery is what turns a scoring exercise into something stakeholders actually believe in.
What I'd improve today
I'd build the scoring criteria together with market stakeholders earlier in the process, so the model reflected what mattered to them from day one rather than being refined after their ideas had already been scored a few times.
