Prioritise
Buy a feature
Also called Buy a feature game
Give people play money and a priced list of features, then watch what they buy, pool money for and argue over.
- Time45 to 60 minutes
- People4 to 8 people per board
- Steps4
What it's for
Ask people to rank features and everything comes back important. Give them a limited budget and they show what they would actually give up. Pricing some features above any one person's budget makes people pool their money, and the reasons they give each other while negotiating are the part to listen to.
Run it with customers or with internal stakeholders. Price each feature by its rough cost, so the trade-offs are real.
How to run it
Price the features10 min
Put 10 to 20 features on notes in For sale, each with a price that reflects its rough cost. Make a few too expensive for one person.
Hand out budgets5 min
Give everyone the same budget, written in Wallets. Together the budgets should buy between a third and two thirds of everything for sale.
Shop20 min
People move what they buy to Bought and note who paid what. Expensive features need several people to chip in.
Explain the purchases15 min
For each feature bought, the buyers say why. Write the reasons down, word for word where you can.
Tips
- Don't steer. Answer questions about what a feature does, but never recommend one.
- What nobody buys is as useful as what everyone buys.
- Leave out features that are already committed. Selling something that's coming anyway wastes people's money.
Where it comes from
One of the Innovation Games created by Luke Hohmann and described in his book Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play (2006).
Pairs well with
$100 test
Each person splits an imaginary $100 between the options, which shows not just what people prefer but how strongly.
MoSCoW prioritisation
Sort requirements into must have, should have, could have and won't have this time, to agree scope against a fixed deadline.
Kano model
Sort features by how customers react to them: basics they expect, performance they want more of, and delights they don't expect.