When prioritising feature requests things can get unorganised and more complicated than they should be quickly. Follow this advice and make your feature prioritisation process more effective. Now I am not a certified expert yet but I have some understanding of the topic.
When you receive feature requests form your customers keep them all in one place. That way you get a good overview and don’t have to spend time gathering them all.
Now what do I mean by the value of a feature?
I mean the value of the customers who want said feature. You want to keep your best customers happy and not have them churn out in frustration. Sometimes five customers request a Feature, but they’re paying you less than the one customer who wants another feature. Know how much a feature is worth and prioritise accordingly.
When a customer submits a feature request they don’t want to wait ages without even knowing if it has been accepted. Update your customer regularly on where their feature is at.
For example first a feature gets rejected or accepted then it moves into planned then it is under development, before it releases. Update the requestors and people who are interested at every step. Whenever possible make this automatic.
Make it easy for your customers to submit feature requests, and they will. A small link at the bottom of your homepage in a dropdown won’t attract much attention. Where to submit features should be obvious and convenient.
Are roadmaps any good? I’d say so. A roadmap for the next month might show your customers where you are headed right now and what’s to come. It also shows that you are working on your software and constantly improving.
Your feature collection and prioritisation should fit into your workflow seamlessly. Maybe you get all your feature requests through Intercom. Maybe you are working with Github issues for development of new features. Find a way to integrate it.
Now all of this might seem a little daunting, but don’t worry there are tools to automate most of it. The one I can recommend, that does most of the mentioned above is FeatureHunter.
If you have any comments or suggestions DM me: @sharpyann
