The 80-20 Rule of Features

filed under syncPEOPLE

Last night we had another late-night planning session - you know the kind that runs past midnight and then I get stuck waiting 1.5 hours for the next train to take me back to my palace in Newark.

We have been working through the requirements for another arm of the project and it seems we always go back and forth, back and forth. Fortunately, everyone involved is super smart and passionate about the part they know. It sure makes for some interesting discussions.

In the end, we landed on our A-ha moment in the last 10 minutes (of course) - and it was all by accident (naturally). It’s funny when that one piece is uttered and all of a sudden the whole thing makes sense like you never imagined before.

I was happy to find an entry on Charlie’s blog today that dealt with what we were grappling with - what to start with. It’s really the hardest thing in the world to answer. Here’s Charlie’s recommendation:

List all of the ideas for functions of your service.
Rank them in terms of value to the user.
Kill off the most useless 20% of the features.
Take the remaining 80% and map how many clicks it takes for someone to actually complete them.
Even with the most simple, try and kill off 20% of the clicks... or if its really simple to begin with, just shave a click off of everything.

All I can say is Amen, brother.