The science of prioritizing

It's been said that "when everything is a priority, nothing has priority." In a recent entry of Inside Product Strategy, software product manager Dave Jones describes a modified version of a technique developed more than 20 years ago by Japanese engineer Noriaki Kano that can help you sort through long lists of requirements and enhancement requests to decide which features should be in your next release.

The article is a bit long-winded, but it essentialy advocates combining multiple ranking schemes for your projects and assigning scores to each proposed feature (or enhancement or bug) for each scheme. You could, for example, assign scores on a 1-4 scale for things like "wow factor," "revenue potential," "request frequency," or (in the case of bugs) things like "severity." The scores you assign are ultimately arbitrary, but combining the schemes by adding up the points can help you sort through a long list of possibilities quickly. It can also provide a documented justification for your ultimate decisions.

I used a method like this for vendor evaluation, ranking each competing vendor on a scale of 1-10 for various things like financial viability, price, support, training, demo-able interface and the completeness of their coverage in several feature areas. Adding up all the scores quickly narrowed the field to two contenders and I was able to make a final choice on one or two of the variables I felt were key. A year later we are very happy with our choice of vendor.