What is the best way to prioritize project features on a tight budget?

Make sure you understand any legal requirements and its impact that are must have. Identifying these critical requirements will help you allocate the budget accordingly and what is left for other requirements which can be part of priority meetings with stakeholders

??Define the problem you're tackling first. - What you know - What you don't know - Assumptions ??Then define why it's important to solve this problem. ??After that, create a list of goals and objectives. ??Prioritize the list against the problem statement using MoSCoW. If an item doesn't contribute to solving a problem, it's low priority. It might not be worth doing at all. Now use the estimate method of your choice to size the effort and determine if you have enough budget to tackle some — or all — of it.

One of the pitfalls I’ve seen projects run into is project delivery teams not truly understanding the business drivers and pain points that are driving the initiative. Often, a features and timeline based mindset overtakes true understanding of business priorities. Additionally, properly defining scope, features, and timeline are key, but also defining a change order process and reprioritization methodology are key to properly managing expectations.

To identify project goals and scope: ? First talk to the stakeholders of the Project ? Identify priorities and scope of the project ? Plan for schedule according to the priorities ? Scope of the project can extend as the project gets started ? Stay in touch according to the Project Plan, if there is a scope creep, discuss with the stake-holders and reprioritize the items ? Goals, Scope, Priority, Planning, Execution, Communication are critical for successful implementation of the project

Align with Strategy: Match features to companies pillars, emphasizing engagement. MoSCoW Method: Categorize features (Must, Should, Could, Won't). MVP: Launch basic product version for quick feedback. Cost vs. Benefit: Evaluate feature cost against potential gains. Value vs. Complexity: Choose high-value, low-complexity features first. Iterative Approach: Roll out in stages; adjust based on responses. Review & Adjust: Change priorities as needs evolve. Engage Stakeholders: Secure alignment on priorities. Maximize value and remain adaptable to feedback.

Prioritizing project features begins with a clear definition of project goals and scope. I focus on understanding our client's needs, identifying stakeholders, and managing expectations. Balancing the project's scope against constraints like time and budget is crucial. I emphasize risk mitigation, establish a shared vision, and stress the importance of continuous review and adaptation to ensure project success. Effective communication, collaboration, and proactive risk management are key principles in our approach.

Impact (I): Evaluate the potential impact of the task or project. Confidence (C): Assess the level of confidence you have in the estimated impact. Ease (E): Evaluate the ease or difficulty of implementing the task or project. Calculate the score of each task using the below formula, which would help to prioritize the tasks ICEScore=Impact x Confidence/Ease All the values can be in the range of 1-10 score.

The kano model has become one of my favorites when it comes to prioritizing. It helps order product features based on their impact on customer satisfaction. It considers 5 distinct types of attributes: Basic: qualities that customers expect from a product, but do not necessarily lead to their satisfaction. Performance: they correlate directly with customer satisfaction. Emotion: innovative features that go beyond customer expectations. Indifferent: they do not significantly affect customer satisfaction. Customers neither value them nor expect them. Inverses: their inclusion can lead to dissatisfaction, i.e., customers consider them unnecessary. With this in mind, it’s easy to select what features go first when there’s a tight budget.

Additionally, define incremental releases and do the ROI based on the incremental releases. Each project is unique and one size doesn’t fit, find combinations of cost, effort, risk and impact to determine the value it will unlock for customers.

MoSCoW is a simple way to reach the goal. Spend time with critical stakeholders to label them correctly. Value Vs effort can be used to prioritize between a few that are "Must haves"

?? Communication: Staying in constant touch with the stakeholders about the progress is critical in managing the project plan and priorities ?? Risk Management: Ensure the stakeholders are aware, if your project is going out of plan and running into risk ?? Quality Management: Show constant demos, and involve stakeholders in testing, to ensure we are delivering the quality as expected. ??Cost Management: Get approvals, if there will be increase in costs for the project. ??Time Management: Ensure that if any delays are communicated to the client accordingly

?? Focus on organizing around and delivering the most value possible. Facilitate intentional and objective engagement with key stakeholders and identify which metrics matter and what value means, looks like, and consists of at every stage of the project. Proactively and transparently address risks, costs and impacts of disruptions of flow and delivery. ?? Determine which features and deliverables align with stakeholders' expectations and allow for significant creation and extraction of value. ?? Identify what resources need to be allocated for successful delivery and if your team has the capacity to deliver the tentatively prioritized features within the budget. Validate your findings with your team and stakeholders. Pivot accordingly.

It is critical for the project manager to understand the stakeholders' end goal so that desired features can be prioritized first. Once stakeholders have agreed on the key features, the project manager can engage the team and share the overall vision. This ensures overall transparency in the process and is extremely beneficial to the project.

This step is crucial. We can't prioritize project features without involving stakeholders. Even the best framework won't work without their commitment.

The stakeholders are key to identify the value that each requirement bring. The team evaluate the effort and identify risks upfront.

This is the toughest part, as it is not easy to find relevant users. The percentage of assumption can vary based on the project, and availability of budget to test and validate the idea with users. Not everyone have time to give feedback for your product, if you are just launching in the market. Some of the below can help to mitigate the Assumption Risk ?? Documenting Assumptions ?? Focus Groups ?? A/B Testing ?? Paid Feedback / Surveys ?? Social Media feedback ?? Influencer Marketing surveys

Prototyping, proof of concept and early testing help to ascertain if you're going in the right direction. Failing early is better than testing a large set of features at the end. Plan your development in such a way that end-to-end testing of features can be performed early.

Two ways to help you validate assumptions and hypotheses are: 1) if it's an end-user facing piece of software to use mock-ups or low-fidelity implementations of the interface and show them to the end-users. This will create buy-in from the user group and provide you with valuable feedback. 2) If it's a system to system piece of software one method we always use is to start with the highest risk part of the project and implement a proof of technology / concept to test if your assumptions are correct.

As you might not have the necessary skills to estimate the scope of work and budget, the team's BA can do it for you. In my company, the Business Analyst talks with the client about the most important requirements, sorts tasks, and shares them with the development team. They then create a detailed work breakout structure around the key features client wants in their product and send it for their approval. In this way, you can get the most accurate estimations regarding time and budget.

Using Agile software development, regular reviews of product backlog and prioritizing features based on customer's changing requirements are key to delivering a user-centric product. Effective communication with the client to understand their changing requirements while also being transparent about its impact on resources, budget and time are crucial for successful delivery.

We can avoid scope creep and deviation in priorities by following below key points ? Change control process: Strict change control process and a dedicated resource for change control is mandatory ? Regular reviews and audits: Project / Product Owners should do regular reviews and audits of the project timeline and scope ? Documentation and Approval: If any change in scope, it has to be documented and approval has to be provided by the stakeholders ? Manage both Top and Bottom: Project leader should have knowledge to say NO to both team members and stakeholders, if the requirements are not within Project Goals

Backlog grooming is a continuous process. Early test releases to the client help to gather feedback which has an influence on the priorities.

?? Always associate cost to time, when you are in a tight budget, a small feature or a small deviation could prove to be costly ?? It is easy to deviate from the target or project goal, when we see shiny objects, that could easily derail our project and cost allocated ? Aligning resources, delivering on time, is critical when working on a tight budget, as costs vary by time ?? Finally, a great project is where both your stakeholders and team members are happy.

If you’re asked to deliver a software project on a tight budget, consider also the operational and maintenance costs that would become ongoing after you’ve delivered the project with your chosen features. It is possible that, if you are compromising on quality or features to deliver within budget - you will create a product that’s more expensive to operate and maintain in the long run. (E.g. hard-coding parameters vs creating an admin interface through which configurations can be adjusted, or forgetting about observability and reliability features - will cost the team down the line). Consider upgrades, integrations, migrations, and Discuss the total costs over the long run with your stakeholders.

I'd like to emphasize that, especially when dealing with a limited budget, we shouldn't hesitate to remove certain features. Sometimes, stakeholders find this challenging, and it's our responsibility as project managers to help them navigate this process smoothly.

When working on tight budget, you should also consider if there is any existing tool that has some features that can be reused. We use this alot in Amazon, keeping in mind the strategy of reusing rather than reinventing the wheel.

Dependency analysis and dependency mapping are also key to prioritisation. Visualising dependencies alongside risks and what are deemed "showstoppers" for the product helps to map out the priorities, optimise the process and minimise rework.