Feature prioritization: Seven questions to ask yourself

Originally published on productshek.com

In an early-stage startup, as a founder/product manager, you have to always prioritize and evaluate what needs to be built next. Ideas are everywhere, but the question is “Should you build it?”. What are the questions you need to ask before building a feature? here are a few of them listed from the book Lean Analytics

1. Why Will It Make Things Better?

In an early-stage startup, you are aiming to improve user retention metrics. Go through all the items in your todo list and ask yourself “Why do I think this will improve retention?”

Don’t be tempted to copy features from other applications. It’s is fine to copy existing patterns and concepts from the market but, know why you are doing so.

Write a hypothesis around the requirement like “Feature x will improve retention by Y percent“. This will lead you to create experiments to validate or invalidate your hypothesis.

2. Can You Measure the Effect of the Feature?

Every feature which goes into the product has to be measured for the impact it has on the product. It is common that features get pushed to the product without any quantifiable validation. If you cannot quantify the impact of the feature, you won’t have any data to make the decision to iterate or kill it over time.

3. How Long Will the Feature Take to Build?

Time is a precious resource. List the relative development time required for all the features. If a few take months, make sure that feature has a significant impact. An alternative solution is to break the features into smaller sub-features, test the risk associated with them individually with MVP or a prototype.

4. Will the Feature Overcomplicate Things?

Adding more features will lead products to get more complicated. It will reach a point where users may leave the product for a simpler alternative application. When describing the feature if you are saying “and it will do this, and this..”, it is a warning sign. If a feature tries to satisfy several needs, it is better to focus on the main problem and separate out solutions for other needs.

Knowing your user’s behavior and expectations

is everything

A complex feature comes in-between testing in the market, customer retention, and acquisition becomes extremely difficult.

5. How Much Risk Is There in This New Feature?

There are risks associated with new features.

for eg:

1. Technical risk on how it will impact the codebase
2. Risk of how users may respond to the new feature
3. Risk on how this will influence the future course of development.

Each feature adds emotional commitment to your development team and your users as well.

6. How Innovative Is the New Feature?

In the early stages of product development, you have the room to be more innovative and radical in terms of solutions. Experimenting and pushing for new ideas will have a big impact on the metrics you are targeting. It is better to make big bets early on in the product life cycle as there are fewer users.

7. What Do Users Say They Want?

User feedback is important but, overlying on user’s words can be risky. Users lie and they don’t like to hurt your feelings.

User actions speak louder than words

Aim for testing hypothesis for every feature you build. In this way, you have a better chance to validate the success or failure of the feature. Simply just tracking the most and least used features will help you know what is working and what is not.

Summary

Validating feature requests is an important function and as a product manager, it is your job to decide what gets built and pushed to the product. The above questions will help you make those decisions.

Comment below on how do you make decisions.