A simple, opinionated tool for helping decide whether a software feature is worth building. Inspired by this.
(1 is Low & 10 is High)
What proportion of users (1 = a small proportion, 10 = all users) are likely to use the feature?
5.5
What is the time, technical effort, and cost to build the feature?
5.5
How important are the target users to the existing product?
5.5
What is the operational / business complexity of the feature?
5.5
How valuable is the feature to the target users, truly?
5.5
How much potential technical risk can the feature bring to the rest of the product?
5.5
Technical decisions are often about being as less-wrong as possible than being right. Decision parameters themselves are dependent on even more parameters, such as the business environment, expertise, team and user culture, cost... There is no one-size-fits all framework for making technical decisions, especially when it comes to adding a new feature to a product as they often (rightly) tend to be subjective bets than scientific conclusions.
This is one opinionated decision making system (a highly simplified version of it) that tries to bring in elements of objectivity to making feature decisions in software products.