Company-Level Prioritization Framework¶
Purpose¶
Devonshire Digital LLC operates multiple ventures, and each venture may eventually maintain multiple products. This framework describes how ventures and products compete for the company's limited attention, time, and capital at the company level — i.e., across ventures, not within one.
Individual ventures may build their own, more detailed prioritization models for decisions internal to that venture (for example, Digital Products may rank its own candidate products against each other). Such venture-level models should be consistent with this company-level framework — using compatible criteria and not contradicting it — even if they add venture-specific nuance.
Evaluation dimensions¶
Every venture or product competing for company attention should be assessed against the same four dimensions:
-
Evidence of customer problem — How well-evidenced is the problem this addresses? Distinguish validated evidence from hypothesis (see
docs/company/research-and-evidence-principles.md). Weak or purely speculative problem evidence should reduce priority regardless of how appealing the idea is. -
Durability — Is this a problem/opportunity likely to persist, or is it a fad, a one-off, or something a larger competitor could trivially commoditize? Prefer durable opportunities over transient ones.
-
Differentiation — What makes Devonshire Digital, or this specific venture, positioned to win here, as opposed to any other team building the same thing? Absence of differentiation is not automatically disqualifying but should lower priority relative to alternatives with clearer differentiation.
-
Execution cost — What does it realistically cost (time, money, focus, opportunity cost against other ventures) to pursue this to a meaningful validation point? Lower-cost paths to evidence are preferred, especially at the current early stage of the company.
How this is used¶
- When comparing ventures against each other for company attention, apply all four dimensions at the venture level.
- When comparing products within and across ventures for whether they
should advance through the intake and stage-gate process (see
intake-and-stage-gates.md), apply the same four dimensions at the product level. - This framework does not itself produce a numeric score. It exists to keep prioritization conversations structured and comparable, not to replace judgment.
What this framework does not do¶
It does not allocate specific budgets, does not set OKRs, and does not
replace venture-level roadmaps. It is a lens for comparison, applied at
decision points (see intake-and-stage-gates.md).