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On your feedback board, you've got 3 or 4 popular customer suggestions, each with 100s of votes. And you need to choose which one to build next.
How can you choose? 🤔
Here are some criteria you might be use.
Which one is easiest to build?
Which idea can you build and deliver the soonest? If all else is equal, then this is certainly a simple way to decide.
Which one is easiest to maintain?
This is quite similar to the previous question, but adds the wisdom of long-term thinking.
Which one requires less work for your team after delivering it?
All software products eventually become maintenance projects. Choose carefully and you can avoid the endless maintenance work. For now.
Which one best matches your vision for your product?
Build the feature that fits best with your long-term vision for your product.
Building a feature just because it is popular is not particularly sensible, if it is outside your vision for your product. It weakens your positioning, and your marketing, and your sales.
Which one will 'wow' your customers?
Which one looks good in a demo with potential customers? Which one gets existing customers to say "that is so good, I don't know how I ever coped without it".
Which one impacts the most users?
Anything you improve on your product's dashboard or home impacts most of your users.
Conversely, adding a feature tucked away where to be found only by those looking for it impacts less users.
So build the dashboard feature.
Beware though: repeat this too many times and you'll have neglected features throughout your app, even though your dashboard is awesome.
Which one is already in your competitor's product?
To compare favourably when potential customers are assessing their options, add the highly requested thing that your competitor has and you don't.
Which one is NOT already in your competitor's product?
The exact opposite of the previous criterium. 🤷♂️ Look, working out what features to build in your product is hard.
If customers are asking for something that will make your product unique, add it and stand out from your competitors. Let your competitors chase after you while you run ahead.
Which one reduces customer support?
This one is my favourite. I like building things in Feature Upvote that removes the need for customers to contact us.
This lets your customers get things done quicker, AND makes things easier for your support team.
Which one is trending?
You've got 3 or 4 equally popular ideas - but only one of them got 50% of their votes in the last month. And the other one hasn't been upvoted for a while.
The trending one is the right one.
What one does your team think you should build?
This is the best one, so I saved it for last.
If your team is small, get them all together. If your team is not so small, get the key people together. Then listen to their opinions about which of the popular ideas should be implemented. Try to gather consensus.
You'll find that your team have insights that make it easier for you to decide.
Some teams create a weighted formula for deciding which feature to build next. A popular one is the RICE formula (Intercom call it a framework but I think that is too grandiose for a simple formula). The RICE formula isn't perfect, and it isn't optimised for your team's needs and values. But it is a good starting point that you can use as the first step towards building your own formula.
My personal view is that you should avoid a formula, and instead talk through the options, and come to a consensus. That's because prioritisation requires comparing things that are hard to compare and can't be easily quantified. Furthermore, the inputs for the a formula must be, by their very nature, estimates that are hard to make and usually turn out to be wildly wrong.
So many criteria...
I've given you several options, some which are relevant for you right now, and some aren't.
It's your product and your team. You know which approach is best suited for where you are right now. Choose one - or several.
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