Business impact versus implementation effort in feature prioritization
Key Takeaway
Rate every feature on business impact and implementation effort. Deliver high-impact, low-effort features first. Plan high-impact, high-effort features on a roadmap for a later phase. Delay or drop low-impact, high-effort features.
Prioritizing by business impact versus implementation effort means rating every candidate feature on two scales. One scale is how much value the feature adds for the business. The other is how much time and resources it takes to deliver. Comparing features on both scales shows what to deliver first, what to plan for a later phase, and what to delay or drop. The result is a ranked feature list that shapes the project phases, the roadmap and the deployment timeline.
The two ratings
Business impact rates how much value a feature adds for the organization. Implementation effort rates the time and resources a feature takes to implement. A common scale for both is High, Medium and Low, so every feature can be compared on the same two dimensions.
Business impact usually comes from four value levers:
- Increasing revenue
- Reducing cost
- Improving productivity
- Increasing strategic capabilities
Business value can also show up as reduced attrition, lower service costs or higher customer satisfaction. Customer value is different: it is the benefit customers get from using the product.
Implementation effort is more than build time, because it includes team bandwidth, financial cost, ongoing maintenance and opportunity cost.