This document discusses techniques for prioritizing features during product development, including common pitfalls. It describes the "Product in a Box" activity where stakeholders imagine the product as a box on a shelf and identify the most exciting, important and valuable features to appeal to customers. Another technique is "Buy a Feature" where players are given a limited budget to collectively discuss and negotiate which features to purchase based on benefits and costs. The document provides examples and tips for effectively facilitating these activities to build consensus around prioritization.

1. PRIORITIZATION
Unnat Gupta
@unnatgupta
Shree Prakash Damani
@shreedamani
Gamifcation of

2. IN THIS SESSION
■ Explore innovation games for prioritization through
● Highly interactive group activity
■ Understand:
● Common Pitfalls
● Tips for effective prioritization
*

3. COMMON PITFALLS …
■ Everything is high priority
■ Lot of discussion on low value features
■ Different priority on same feature by different stakeholder
■ Whoever screams the loudest, gets priority
■ Time consuming and ineffective

4. TECHNIQUE ONE – PRODUCT IN A BOX
■ Leverage collective retail consumer experience of stakeholder to
identify
●Most Exciting
●Important
●Valuable
Features of a product/service

5. PRODUCT IN A BOX
Imagine <the project> as a product on a supermarket shelf.
What would appear on the box that would appeal to our
customers?

6. HOW TO – PRODUCT IN A BOX
■ Split the team into cross-functional groups of 5 - 6 people
■ Provide the team with some card-board boxes
■ Group to imagine that they’re selling their product/service in a
trade show/ retail outlet/ public market
■ Ask the group to design a product box for their offering
■ The box should also have key marketing slogan, pictures, price
point etc they find interesting
■ Group to sell their product- box to others

7. CASE STUDY
We want to develop a flight booking system
 Some Salient Features:
• Search Flights
• Flight Booking
• Multiple payment options
• Track your bookings
• Deals and Promotions
• Faster Booking

8. HANDS-ON
*

9. THINGS TO WATCH OUT FOR
■ Watch interactions during selling helps in identifying most
important and useful information
■ Open ended exercise, needs good facilitation
■ Scalability
■ Physical Preparation

10. WHEN TO – PRODUCT IN A BOX
■ Participation from all quarters
■ Any stage of the PDLC, ideal in the beginning/conceptualization
■ Move the discussion from “features” to “benefits”
■ Prioritization based on benefits and unique selling proposition

11. TECHNIQUE TWO
How to Get a Group of People To
Prioritize a List of features...
The Innovation Game:
BUY A FEATURE

12. WHY “BUY A FEATURE”
■ Lots of people actively engaged: Customers, Partners,
Employees…
■ Prioritize the features as a group - builds consensus,
encourages negotiation
■ A way to understand the reasons behind the priority
■ Cost v/s value evaluation
■ Most importantly, it is a method that clients will enjoy!

13. HOW TO – BUY A FEATURE
■ Features described in terms of benefits and costs
■ 5 to 8 players given limited budget based on available capacity
■ Group collectively discusses and negotiates to purchase
features
■ Discussions around each feature identifies the reason behind
selecting or not selecting a feature

14. CASE STUDY
Product - Easymail
■ Easymail is a webmail service launched a few months ago in a limited
beta
■ The current version is something of a minimum viable product.
■ Easymail does not provide their own email service, but integrates with
existing, providing the user with a great user interface.
■ The idea is to gather all your emails at one place, make it searchable and
stand out by having a unique user interface.
■ Easymail have partnered with several email providers to get access to
their API’s.

15. HANDS-ON
*

16. OTHER TECHNIQUES
Users
Usage

17. QUESTIONS??

18. *
THANK YOU
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CONTACT:
Shree Damani Unnat Gupta
shreepd@thoughtworks.com unnatgupta@gmail.com
@shreedamani @unnatgupta
in.linkedin.com/in/shreedamani in.linkedin.com/in/unnat