How to decide priority of the feature?

Greetings everyone,

From long been, I was thinking about few questions. For some one point of view, it might look very stupid and novice.

However, I thought to share with you all.

Here we go,

1) How product manager should cut the line between setting up the priority of the features? (ex. Line between MUST HAVE or SHOULD HAVE or NICE TO HAVE)? Now the catch is, while we develop MRD/PRD; few features have been recommended by customer, few from services, few are from engineering, few may be very newer and innovative ….how are we going to decide priority for each of these? and would set “X” priority?  and If “X” then why only “X” and not “Y”? (I know, its more situational and depends on customer demand and market conditions, but still is their any basics we can follow!)

2) Is their any generic strategy/criteria (Other than ROI), which we could apply while deciding up the priorities?

3) How are we handling/looking at the ROI of any feature we recommend as MUST HAVE?
4) And most importantly, What if feature we perceived as MUST HAVE is not being used by customer after actual release of product?
It indirectly means, our perception about feature was wrong! How to handle these differences?

Anyone would like to put up some thoughts on these !

Thanks,

-Yogesh

Must have features for product?

There was a discussion going on for “what are the MUST HAVE use would like to see in a mobile?

I felt I should write my thought process on this, here we go!

Let me clear one thing, I don’t have any feature suggestion, However I felt I should still share this thought process. 

I think, we should ask following questions to ourselves before we decide the MUST HAVES!

 ·         What’s the greatest thing user like about any mobile? In my opinion, one of the key factor user would be looking is  “USABILITY”! 

 ·         Why people were crazy about ‘i-phone’? or for that matter any product from apple?I think, USABILITY is very very important factor whenever we consider any product in “retail consumer” market.  

·         I have even seen people changing their mobile models but don’t change their mobile company? Why?  the most probable answer would be usability … the way they “USE FEATURES” 

·         Now looking at usability, again we can drill down with few more questions!

 ·         Can we know any customer who have used or currently using *ALL* features provided by a “Product”?

I bet, we would not find many :( Again in my opinion the key is, customer doesn’t use 100% of the feature provided by product. (If you have a customer, then I believe you/your product goes into luckiest list ;) 

·         Then next question comes, If we consider that 90 % of customer doesn’t uses “ALL” feature then what most likely feature they would use? 
 Or 
 ·         What’s “HOTTEST” feature they use? and why?  If we search the result, we might end up with 80/20  result!

It means 80 % of consumer uses “COMMON” 20 % of the features. and i think, that’s what are the MUST HAVE !  

·         Now If consider 20 % features, they might say, I can ‘write SMS easily/effectively”  now would you consider this as must have? ;)

If anyone has any other thought process or would like to criticize, please share your thoughts.

 -Yogesh