How to Introduce a Feature

The most important part of product development work is to build the right things at the right time. To allow the company to make decisions on product development projects it is important to understand the value a certain feature brings and how it will impact different parts of the company as well as the effort required to build them.

Therefore, before you even think about creating a “feature” make sure you know WHY you want to build a feature:

1. Ensure you understood the user/ business problem you are trying to solve well and define clear (measurable) areas you are seeking to improve

2. Start an assumption sheet and try to come up with low-(tech)-effort ways to test these assumptions

3. Test your assumptions by looking at analytics data, talking to customers or finding industry benchmarks

4. During testing, you might find out that you are trying to solve a non-existent problem or come up with totally new ways to solve the issue at hand

After you validated your assumptions you set up a feature like this:

1. Start by checking if you are introducing a new user story and/or changing an existing one

   1. Add additional steps to existing stories as “Extensions” at the bottom with acceptance criteria & reasoning

   2. For writing new stories check out this article: Writing effective user stories

   3. Try to keep it as short as possible and keep all technical parts for the feature article later on

2. Start a confluence article with the template “Feature Overview”:

   1. Describe the problem and your validated assumption in the motivation part

   2. Write a rough outline for a solution from a user perspective

3. Start a “Feature Version” article for Version 1.0 of your article:

   1. Describe the motivation for what issues you want to solve first with Version 1.0

   2. Change log: can remain empty

   3. Users stories: Link to user stories that are newly created or changed by the feature

   4. Task: Add actual tasks incl. acceptance criteria & reasoning

   5. Screens: Leave empty until there are designs

4. Create a single clubhouse ticket with a link to the version article

5. Introduce your feature in the next backlog grooming meeting and get it reviewed by the other PMs

6. After review: Add clubhouse ticket to design project in clubhouse and send articles to designers so they can read through it

7. Introduce & hand-over the feature to designers at the next Monday Product Kick-off

8. Get designs reviewed by product owner

9. Finalize designs & articles and introduce feature in ad-hoc kick-off meeting with devs (check with Luis quickly on who to invite) to create separate dev tickets →create an Epic from original ticket if needed

10. Prioritize dev tickets & define further and get them estimated at later Monday estimation meeting

11. Discuss final prioritization in backlog grooming sessions to get the feature into the dev pipeline

12. Create feature-XYZ slack group with all devs involved