Kano Analysis, while initially created to understand customer satisfaction with features, can be used by product managers to better understand customer problems. I gave a presentation last week for the Product Management View webinar series on Kano Analysis for product managers.
Dell Cell Phone Lacks Differentiation
No cell for Dell. According to Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu, carriers rejected prototypes from Dell because the “lack of differentiation.” As product managers, we know the importance of keeping up with the Joneses, but we also know the importance of including differentiated value in our product offerings.
Why Prioritization Matters
I am a big fan of boxes and arrows, but this time, Jeffrey Davidson found a great article by Dan Willis before I did, and told me about it. Thanks Jeffrey! The article is about how to deal with the what and how of requirements and design – and it […]
Product Differentiation vs. Product Improvement
Build a better mousetrap. That’s what they used to say. But that doesn’t differentiate our products. Everyone is doing better, we need to do different.
Goldilocks and the Three Products
Michael on High-Tech Product Management and Marketing has a fantastic “wish I wrote that” post about the importance of having the right number of features. He has several references, the best of which is Kathy Sierra’s Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak post from June 2005. The two posts combined provide great insight into why having too many features is bad, while acknowledging that too few is just as bad. In this post we will look at what we can do to apply these insights and also change the rules some, making our software more desireable than our competition.
Epicenter software design – 37signals applies Kano
Jason at 37signals has started a discussion about feature prioritization with his recent post. He describes the epicenter of software as the most important, must-have feature. He argues that this feature should always be the one that is built first, since without it you don’t have an application. This is the same approach we reccommended in our recent post about prioritizing requirements with Kano analysis. The epicenter, while critically important, isn’t sufficient to drive success for the software.
Interaction Design and Structured Requirements
subtitle: Wiegers and Cooper assimilated
Wiegers promotes structured requirements. Cooper touts Interaction Design. Both have great ideas. Both “wave their hands” at parts of the process. In this post, we’ll talk about how to combine the two philosophies to get the best of both worlds.