You don’t want to waste time building features your users don’t want. At the same time, you want to be mindful of using your development resources to utilize in the most efficient way possible.

Here’s a framework you can use to decide what features to build.

Target description: Quantitative description of what target segment/customer/user group this feature designed for.

Target size: Estimated % of your active users that your target segment represents

User problem description: Identify the core user problem that this feature solves

User Problem Frequency: How often does the target user experiences the problem the feature is designed to solve?

User Problem Severity: How important is the problem to target users?

Strategic Importance: How does the deployment of this feature build upon the product’s core value proposition?

Hypothesis: If/Then/Because you observed. Eg: If the user can’t collaborate with other designers, then he has to resort to Slack & emails for collaboration leading to information silos. Because of this, product development is stalled. This is why we’re building a collaboration feature.

Solution: A high level description of the solution or multiple possible solutions

Benefit - The benefit is a core component of a product strategy. Its description should summarize how the initiative will delight customers or outperform the competition, build the feature in a way that is difficult to replicate, and align with the product strategy in a way that enhances margins.

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