How to prioritize product features and improvements

Kano model , developed by Noriaki Kano. This template asks you to rank features according to customer satisfaction. Since this is the end goal of your product, it might be a good methodology to follow.

2. Organize

Once you've categorized your resources, it's time to organize them further. Think about ways to keep track of your feature backlog. It could be a spreadsheet or a project management tool – whatever works best for you and your team. Creating a system to organize all of your planned and accomplished resources will allow you to consider the big picture and visualize how your resources fit together.

Incorporate your categories into your organization's schema. If you're using a project management tool, for example, you can color-code resources.

3. Measure ROI

Now that you've created a clear, organized system, complete with categories of proposed features, it's time to measure your impact. This will allow you to determine how big of a positive effect a particular feature will have on your product.

To fully measure return on investment (ROI), you will need to score each feature, assigning a numerical value to each. Of course, this is not an exact science, but it should be feasible to estimate the quantifiable impact a feature will have on the bottom line. Use your goals and objectives as a tool to quantify these improvements, as well as the amount of effort and time each one will take to implement.

4. See alternative scoring methods

Once you've scored the features, it's easy to rank them according to their numerical value. But there are also several established methodologies for validating the true value of your resources.

One methodology is an impact effort matrix. This is a 2 by 2 grid that helps you evaluate the effort you need to make and the benefits you can reap as a result. It serves as a complement to the scoring method described in step 3, helping you find the features that will have the biggest impact on your overall product with as little effort as possible.

Or consider using the RICE method. The acronym stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence and Effort. These 4 factors allow you to consider each feature against these criteria and make an educated and informed decision.

5. Rate resources

Using the methods listed in steps 3 and 4, you can then sort the features according to their numeric values. There are also additional ways to classify different resources.

See the story mapping. Through this method, you will experience your product from the user's perspective. The “map” follows the path your user takes when experiencing your product, finding feature categories along the way. This, in turn, will allow you to rank these experiences in order of importance, usually represented visually on a vertical axis, while the journey itself appears on the horizontal axis.

6. Talk to your team

Resource decisions should not be made unilaterally. You can get a clear idea about the features that are best to incorporate into your product. But because other team members – the product manager, UX design team, project manager, and quality assurance (QA) engineer, among others – will be involved in implementing them, they should also have a say. .

In addition to offering their opinions on the need for these features, team members can also offer their perspectives from a feasibility standpoint.

7. Check

There is a very human element to the user experience with your product. In fact, because it will be the people who use it, it is actually the most important element. Once you've done the brainstorming, scoring, rating, and reviewing, it's time to take a good look at the features from a personal angle, considering how a human will use the product and what they want. In other words, check the work you've done using your own brain.

Verification, however, is not the same as intuitive verification – no feature should be implemented or prioritized based on intuition.

8. Make a launch plan

So, you've prioritized your resources. You've determined which ones need to be implemented immediately and which ones will remain on your backlog for now. Now it’s time to make a clear plan for launching your product.

This involves working closely with your developers , product managers, UX designers, project managers, and QA engineers to review features, determine how you will verify and implement them, and ultimately deploy your product.

Evaluating and prioritizing product features and improvements is challenging work, but following these steps will help you determine the most important qualities your product needs to have and allow you to release quality software faster.