13/10/2022
We discussed about the RICE framework in my previous article. How about we talk about other feature prioritization methods today.
There are several methods that can help product managers with feature prioritization depending on the stage of a product. But how do you get list of features in the first place? I would suggest using research, empathize, define & ideate from Design Thinking principles. You could also do competition analysis to get things started.
KANO Method:
This method is ideal at launch stage & uses user feedbacks to identify what they would like & expect in a product. By doing this exercise, product managers would come across features that users either don't care about or dislike. A specific approach is recommended while conducting such research i.e. maintaining user diversity, reasonable sample size and how to ask questions related to how users feel about a feature. Rather than leaving the answers to these questions open-ended, you want to have respondents use a 5 point scale. i.e. Like it, Expect it, Donβt care, Live with or Dislike it. This makes analyzing the data easier and helps in building user personas. Once you have scored the features, you can simply prioritize them based on their scores.
MoSCoW Method:
Used usually at the MVP stage or for internal projects, this method focuses on the features that adds maximum value, save cost and time to deliver a product through stakeholder feedbacks. Product managers can then score individual features and make decisions based on available resources and time. MoSCoW is an acronym made up of the first letters. The two O's have been added to make the word 'moscow' readable, they don't have any meaning themselves. The M stands for 'Must haves', S for 'Should haves', C for 'Could haves' and W for 'Won't haves' or 'Would haves'.
Opportunity Scoring:
Also called gap analysis, focuses on the features that the user considers important but is underdeveloped or disappointing. This can bring innovation if product managers focus on what the users are trying to achieve through their feedbacks. To calculate opportunity, we need estimated score for importance of a feature and satisfaction level of the user. The equation to find out opportunity score is
Opportunity = Importance + Max(Importance - Satisfaction, 0).
I will talk about what method to use when and why in my next article.