The Battle for the Right Features or: How to Improve Product Release Decisions?1

A release is a major (new or upgraded) version of an evolving product characterized by a collection of (new, corrected or modified) features. The terms “product release planning” refers to the process of deciding which features will be offered, and if so, in which of the future product releases. This article describes the Why, What and How for improving the process of product release planning. The emphasis is on a systematic and transparent process which is combining the intuition of the human decision‐maker with the capabilities of a process‐centric support tool. Planning for the right feature Features are the “selling units” of a product. Failure to provide the “right” features at the “right” time typically has strong impact on customer satisfaction and consequently on business success. In order to provide the “right” features at the right time, proper understanding of the market needs is required. This includes understanding stakeholders’ priorities, i.e., how important the different features are judged by the different customers and stakeholders. In case the expected and most requested features are not offered in a release, the product is likely to fail in the market. Systematic release planning includes the analysis of the customer needs and provides a pathway to match these needs as well as possible with the time and resources available. Decisions studied in release planning are part of product management, an emerging discipline that aims at improving the whole process of development ranging from product requirements to design, implementation, product launch, and maintenance In its essence, release planning is the process of defining the functionality of a sequence of product releases as part of incremental development. Customers and stakeholders are continuously asking for more features or revision of existing ones. But: Which ones to finally select for the next release and why? And: Which features are not attractive enough and are better left out (or postponed)?. These and other questions are addressed by the release planning process. This article is partially based on content that is described in more detail in the authors recent book [Ruhe ‘10] Release planning is illustrated in Figure 1. Release k accommodates a collection of features taken from the original feature data base. [Wiegers '03] defines a product feature as a set of logically related requirements that provide a capability to the user and enable the satisfaction of business objectives. More and more features are added in subsequent releases called k, k+1 and k+2.