Buy a Feature: Prioritize by Making Customers Spend
Buy a Feature turns prioritization into a game where customers spend a limited budget on their desired features. It's used in product planning to force trade-offs and reveal true value.
The mental model
Instead of asking customers to rank a list of features, you give them a limited budget and make them buy the ones they want. This simulates the real-world scarcity of development resources and forces them to make trade-offs. The goal isn't just to see what they buy, but to listen to the negotiations that reveal their true priorities and why they value certain things.
How it works
First, create a list of 14 to 30 potential features, each with a name, description, and price. Prices can be based on development cost or customer value, but some features must be priced too high for any single customer to afford alone. Next, gather customers into small groups of four to seven and give them a fixed amount of play money. They must then discuss, negotiate, and pool their funds to purchase the features they collectively want in the next product release.
When to use it
Use this game when you need to break a prioritization deadlock and move beyond customers saying they "want everything." It is excellent for roadmap planning for the next one to three releases, as it forces customers to articulate and defend their needs to their peers. The real value is the qualitative data from observing their discussions.
When not to use it
Do not include features you have already committed to building; this erodes trust. The game is less effective for long-term, abstract planning and is not a substitute for one-on-one interviews. Its primary weakness is if you only record the final 'purchases' and ignore the rich conversational data from the negotiations.
One canonical example
Imagine a company making a fuel-cell-powered toy car. Instead of grouping customers by income, they group them by usage: a 'park' group and a 'beach' group. The feature list includes 'sand-proof wheels' and 'extended-range antenna'. The beach group will likely pool their money for the sand-proofing, while the park group might ignore it and buy the antenna. The negotiation reveals the context and specific value drivers for each group, which is far more useful than a simple feature poll.
Interview question
What is the primary reason the "Buy a Feature" game is considered effective for product prioritization?
- a.It provides a precise financial valuation of each feature based on customer willingness to pay.
- b.It forces customers to make difficult trade-offs, revealing their true priorities through negotiation.Correct
- c.It generates a final, unchangeable list of features guaranteed for the next product release.
- d.It replaces the need for one-on-one customer interviews by gathering all feedback in a group setting.
Why? this is the answer
The game's core strength lies in simulating scarcity, which compels customers to negotiate and reveal their underlying motivations and priorities when forced to choose. While customers "buy" features, the game's primary value isn't a precise financial valuation but rather the insights into why they choose certain features over others under budget constraints.
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Read the original → lukehohmann.com
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