Few products fail due to a lack of ideas. From the very first frustration which lights the spark, the features flow thick and fast. What started as a simple requirement quickly balloons into an all-encompassing platform that fixes every problem your team has and will ever face.
Feature ideation is a natural part of product discovery. It’s also an important one. But balancing all these ideas can be a challenge. In this 60-second read, we tackle one simple question:
How do you choose the right idea?
1. Align
The first step in choosing the right idea is making sure everyone involved understands what the product vision and purpose is as well as the guiding principles. Each member of your team will have their own perspectives.
Clarify your north star metric, the product personas you’re targeting, and the process you’re tackling. Establish the pain points and their severity. This will help to align everyone behind a shared cause. It will keep conversations focused.
2. Ideate
Coming up with feature ideas when you’ve got a focus prevents that idea explosion we mentioned earlier. Number every pain point and make sure every feature references at least one frustration.
Once everyone’s out of ideas, discuss the effort and impact of each one. Mapping them on a matrix helps you pinpoint where the easy wins are: the high impact, low effort quadrant.
3. Prioritise
At this point, the only thing left to do is prioritise your features. We recommend the MoSCoW method:
- Must
- Should
- Could
- Won’t
Each tier has three levels: high, medium, and low priority. Listing every feature in this order provides you with an actionable roadmap that delivers the most value, quickly.
If you’re in the early stages of product discovery and need help prioritising the valuable features, we’d love to help you. Let’s talk.