Software Development Better, Faster, Stronger with Feature Prioritization

Software Development Better, Faster, Stronger
with Feature Prioritization
A guide to save time and align your stakeholders
mentormate.com | 3036 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55408 | (855) 977-9089

A world without feature prioritization
Contents
1
2
3
6
7
8
What is feature prioritization?
4 reasons feature prioritization can boost your software project
Improving the team dynamic with feature prioritization
The alternative: A case of battling stakeholders
So you’ve decided feature prioritization is for you
9
10
12
13
14
Introducing a more scientific development method
Step-by-step feature prioritization
Reading your matrix weights
Using the matrix
Scoring the feature list

A world without feature prioritization is a noisy,
disorganized place fraught with frequent conversations
around “value” and “timeline”. So frequent — in fact —
that far less actually gets done.
In this world, the stress barometer reads “off the
charts.” Tempers flare and decisions are made with
wanton abandon. Often the players with the loudest
voice or most organizational pull win out — not the
players with a rational understanding of relevance,
business value and reasonable timelines.
At the expense of what? Cohesive user flows. A
hodgepodge of features that feels more like a digital
consignment shop than a well-thought out user
experience.
A world without
feature prioritization
1
Feature prioritization defined
Feature prioritization is the process of
identifying business goals and weighting
them to be used in scoring the priority of
features being considered for development.
Best used to align stakeholders balancing
diverse departmental perspectives, feature
prioritization helps teams to prioritize X feature
over Y. A team may decide in-app messaging
is more important than calendar functionality
that syncs with Google if increasing
communication with the target audience
has been identified as a key business driver.
Feature prioritization can also be used to
inform the product release roadmap.

2
What is
feature prioritization?
You don’t have to live in this world. (We certainly
don’t.) A world WITH feature prioritization feels
by comparison like a totally different universe.
Frustration arising from fielding and balancing
development requests from different departments
is diminished. While at the same time, the business
value derived from that development is amplified.
How could this be? By identifying the business goals
and assigning value-related development asks, it
ensures all stakeholders understand the vision and
rationale behind the priority assignments in the
feature prioritization matrix.

3
4 reasons
can boost your
software project
From preserving your bottom line to
increasing team cohesion, feature
prioritization is the industry’s best
kept strategy for smarter, more
effective development.

1. Savings all around 2. A clear direction for all
Feature prioritization saves on time, frustration and
wasted breath by aligning stakeholders around the
“value” that can be gained from development early
on. This understanding of value is then used to
weight features being considered for development
later in the process eliminating the need to rehash
the conversation (read: argument) each time a new
feature is proposed.
Prioritization, which can be translated into a product
roadmap, provides sequential direction to your
development team ensuring the features most
critically needed are the features in progress, first.
Clear direction for your development team cuts
down on inefficiencies too — all but eliminating
effort expended building the wrong features. Less
inefficiencies mean greater potential product
success overall.
4

3. Time is money 4. Everyone approaches time-
lines and deliverables with
eyes wide openFewer inefficiencies mean fewer resources wasted.
Enough said.
Feature prioritization is an integral component to
determine medium and long range planning — the
app or platform additions that can be expected this
week, this month and on.
5

Improving the team
dynamic with
Even beyond savings in time and money, feature
prioritization preserves or improves on the existing
team dynamic by facilitating collaborative not
combative decision-making. Look for instance at the
successful software ventures founded in dorm rooms
across the country — from the most notable example
Facebook to the microfinance network PoverUP,
which coordinates providing small business loans to
entrepreneurs worldwide.
What makes developing these ventures so much
more effective than the typical software project
coordinated and run within a company?
The simple answer — many times the product
owner and the development owner are
one-in-the-same. Now when coordinating a larger
scale development project, it’s usually not feasible
for one person to perform both roles. When,
the solution may impact such a wide swatch of
the business it’s not realistic for one person to have
acquired all the necessary knowledge to make
informed decisions. Though, feature prioritization
brings us one step closer to this ideal.
6

The alternative:
A case of battling stakeholders
Each has a fundamentally opposed business goal.
As many have seen, in cases where objectives are
so different often all three suffer when developed
since the effort it takes to realize each to its optimum
potential in a limited timetable isn’t realistic.
Without stakeholder alignment businesses risk not
delivering on any of the stated goals. On top of this,
when development is spread thin to accomplish three
diverse goals, it can create the perception your team
isn’t delivering. This added pressure isn’t good for
moral. And it certainly isn’t good for revenue
generation as a result of your completed or
refurbished app.
Avoid it with feature prioritization.
Take for instance this scenario:
Three stakeholders have gathered in a room
to talk about the next development tasks
in an app they’re creating. Stakeholder A
values aesthetics. He wants the app to be as
functionally beautiful as possible. Stakeholder
B is concerned with lead generation. She is
interested in exposing as many new users to
the app as conceivable. Stakeholder C values
retention. She would rather afford value to the
app’s already large user base.
7

So you’ve decided
is for you
Effective feature prioritization starts with a clear
understanding of the business problem you intend to
solve, the business goals and the intended users
of your solution.
Ask yourself these six clarifying questions before you
embark on a feature prioritization exercise. (At right)
Better yet — email them to the stakeholders who will
be participating in your prioritization meeting. Ask
them to come to the meeting with answers to the
questions identified. Let that serve as a springboard
for your discussion. During your meeting with
stakeholders, seek to gain alignment in answering the
question list.
• What is the criteria to assess
the value?
• What are the business goals of
the application?
• How are you going to monetize it?
• What is your user base?
• What are the size and demographics
of the user base?
• What’s the business problem
you’re trying to solve?
Tailoring the question list
Know that you may have others more appropriate
to your specific business problem. Don’t be afraid to
add your own or adapt the list. For example, asking,
“What’s your user base?” might not be valid if you are
creating firmware or an automatic backup capability
— anything users don’t interact with directly.
8

9
Introducing
a more scientific
development method
Consider feature prioritization the conductor of the
development world helping to harmonize a choir of
perspectives ranging from 5 to 100. How?
By discussing value first and features second, it
creates a layer of abstraction between the features
and the people suggesting them. It’s a collective
approach that better separates personalities and
feelings from the estimations of features and
their importance.
It all starts with discovery.

Step-by-step
Compile your prospective feature set.
We call this first step discovery, because that’s the
goal. Comb through any existing user stories or
requirement documents to source your list. This may
involve conducting customer or stakeholder
interviews for inspiration.
Determine business goals.
What’s most important — adding reliability,
increasing marketing share or something totally
different that your committee decides? It’s important
your stakeholders participate in identifying and are
aligned around the relevant criteria that will comprise
the framework to assess the relative value of each
feature. Now is the time to put a stake in the ground.
Poll your department heads. Whatever it takes to
reach a clear vision. The business goals and
corresponding criteria you identify will inform how
you weight the business drivers in the next step.
10

Step-by-step
Weight your assessment criteria.
Here is where you assign a weight to the business
goals you identified for further development of your
mobile app. Let’s assume you’ve identified
the following business goals:
Weighting the objectives spurs discussion between
stakeholders about what’s most important for the
business and the priority of satisfying each objective.
By assigning relative weights to the criteria, you’re
creating numeric priority you will then use to score
and rank the goals.
Establish a stronger brand identity
Increase app adoption and usage
Gain users
Increase reliability of the app
A
B
C
D
11

12
Reading your matrix weights
Maneuvering the give-and-take
Assigning weights to the criteria allows you to bypass
difficult conversations around the features that
should be developed first. Instead, it acknowledges
that some goals have a higher priority. The actual
order of the feature list should be guided by these
weight assignments. Rather than, “What do you mean
the brand identity of the app ISN’T IMPORTANT?”
Conversations will sound something like this,
“Yes gaining market share is important, I think it’s
outranked slightly by our need to increase the existing
reliability of the app.
A
D
Establish a stronger
brand identity
10%
B
Increase app
adoption and usage
30%
C
Gain Users
20%
Increase reliability
of the app
40%
Reading the weights
According to the example above, increasing the reli-
ability of the app is most important and establishing a
stronger brand identity is least important.

It’s decision time. The good news? All the stakeholders
must do is rank each of the features on a scale from
1 to 5 for their success moving the dial on each of the
business goals identified. We’ve found the following
process works best:
Project the matrix or view it on a large screen as a
group. Work from the top of the matrix down. Identify
a meeting leader. This person will serve as the
speaker of sorts running the process. Though this
person has no more deciding power than any other
attendee. The power remains with the group.
The leader will ask the individual who sponsored or
identified the feature to propose a score. Then, the
leader will open the discussion to the group.
Discuss and adjust scores as a group until
consensus is gained. The exercise can be slow
initially. It’s a learned process that speeds as the
group gains experience proposing a score and
finding consensus.
Establishing a more defined color scheme might be
ranked as follows:
Move through our complete feature list
documenting the values in the matrix. The tool does the
rest, ultimately enabling a more value-driven
conversation compared to one mired in details and
personal opinion.
Establish a stronger brand identity - 5A
Increase app adoption and usage - 3B
Gain users - 2C
Increase reliability of the app - 1D
13

Using the matrix
The feature prioritization process is best understood
through the lens of an example. Imagine an artists’
cooperative has decided to create a mobile app to
better communicate with and understand their
membership along with the art lovers they serve in a
large metropolitan area. Let’s call it New York.
The cooperative has both studio and pop-up retail
locations around the city. They host events at these
locations and also hope their app can facilitate better
connection between artists and art appreciators. Here
is how to visualize their feature prioritization process.
Click here to access the matrix.
14

15
• Feedback system for events
• Simple, beautiful UX
• Adjust settings for color or font size
• Built-in analytics
• Messaging from event hosts
within the app
• Accumulation of points for events
attended within a predetermined tier
system
• Push notifications
• In-app scheduling to meet with artist
in studio space
• Social media integration with
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram
• One touch contact
• Integration with email system like
My Emma or MailChimp
• In-app coupons
Step 1:
Compile the prospective feature set
After a discovery phase that included talking with members
and past event attendees, stakeholders in the cooperative
compile the following features for consideration.
Social media integration
with Facebook, LinkedIn,
Twitter, Instagram
Integration with email
system like My Emma or
MailChimp
Push notifications
One touch contact
Coupons
Option for Spanish
translation
Accumulation of
points for events
attended within
a predetermined tier
for system
In-app scheduling to
meet with artist
in studio space
Feedback system for
hosted events
Application Major
Feature/Service Theme
1st
Business
Driver
4th
Business
Driver
2nd
Business
Driver
5th
Business
Driver
3rd
Business
Driver
6th
Business
Driver
7th
Business
Driver
8th
Business
Driver
Weight
Communication
Communication
Consumer insight
User experience
Brand identity
Communication
Communication
Communication
Awareness
Customer
experience
Customer
experience
Adoption
Awareness
Adjust settings for color
of font size
Simple, beautiful UX
Built-in analytics
Messaging from hosted
events within the app
Total
Score
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

16
• Increase engagement with users
• Disseminate information
• Promote the cooperative
• Gain users
• Establish a strong brand identity
Step 2:
Determine the business goals
These are the tactics that will help drive new business for
the cooperative, help them retain their existing membership
or maintain attendance levels at events. The sample goals
they chose listed in grey at the top of the chart are:
Twitter, Instagram
MailChimp
Push notifications
Option for Spanish
translation
Accumulation of
points for events
attended within
for system
Coupons
meet with artist
in studio space
One touch contact
Feedback system for
hosted events
Built-in analytics
of font size
Communication
Communication
Consumer insight
User experience
Brand identity
Communication
Communication
Communication
Awareness
Customer
experience
Customer
experience
Adoption
Awareness
Application Major
Increase
engagement
with users
Disseminate
information
Promote the
cooperative
Establish a
strong brand
identityGain users
6th
Business
Driver
7th
Business
Driver
8th
Business
Driver
Weight
Total
Score
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00

17
Step 3:
Weight your assessment criteria
Assign priority with a given weight to the business drivers
listed horizontally across the top of your matrix. The higher
you weight the priority of each driver, the more heavily it will
assign importance to related features.
Twitter, Instagram
MailChimp
Push notifications
Option for Spanish
translation
Coupons
Accumulation of
points for events
attended within
for system
meet with artist
in studio space
One touch contact
Feedback system for
hosted events
Built-in analytics
of font size
Communication
Communication
Consumer insight
User experience
Brand identity
Communication
Communication
Communication
Awareness
Customer
experience
Customer
experience
Adoption
Awareness
Increase
engagement
with users
Disseminate
information
Promote the
cooperative
Establish a
strong brand
identityGain users
6th
Business
Driver
7th
Business
Driver
8th
Business
Driver
Total
ScoreApplication Major
Weight 25 40 15 10 10 0 0 0 100
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00

18
Step 5:
Score each feature for its ability to
positively impact each business
driver on a scale of 1 to 5. Scores
of 5 heavily influence the business
driver. Scores of 1 have a minimal
impact on the business driver.
After this has been completed,
reorder the list to see the features
prioritized in order of importance.
Step 4:
Reading the weights
According to the weights assigned in the chart, business
drivers for the cooperative in order of importance are:
Disseminate information, increase engagement with users,
promote the cooperative with gaining users and establishing
a strong brand identity tied for least important.
Push notifications
Twitter, Instagram
MailChimp
meet with artist
in studio space
Option for Spanish
translation
Feedback system for
hosted events
Coupons
Accumulation of
points for events
attended within
for system
One touch contact
Built-in analytics
of font size
Communication
Communication
Consumer insight
User experience
Brand identity
Communication
Communication
Communication
Customer
experience
Customer
experience
Adoption
Awareness
Awareness
Increase
engagement
with users
Disseminate
information
Promote the
cooperative
Establish a
strong brand
identityGain users
6th
Business
Driver
7th
Business
Driver
8th
Business
Driver
Total
ScoreApplication Major
Weight 25
5 5 5 4 3
5 5 4 2 2
5 5 5 4 3
5 5 4 2 2
5 5 2 4 1
4
4 3 2 2 1
4 3 2 2 1
4 5 4 2
3 4 2 25
5 1 3 1 2
3 1 2 2 5
4 1 1 4 1
2 1 1 1 5
40 15 10 10 0 0 0
94.00
94.00
85.00
85.00
81.00
79.00
69.00
56.00
56.00
48.00
43.00
41.00
33.00
100

mentormate.com | 3036 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55408 | (855) 977-9089
Talk with an expertOur take
Want help discovering, ideating around and
prioritizing your features? We’re experts
at roadmap development and project strategy.
Give us a call. We can help.
Feature prioritization and the advance planning it
requires is a way teams can manage time and risk
while maximizing business value by making
more effective decisions.
855-977-9089
info@mentormate.com
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