The Feature Funnel: More On Ambiguity

I ended my post on popularity and ambiguity by promoting the benefits of a glossary of terms. This post will continue to explore the problems of ambiguity associated with natural language.

In addition to establishing a glossary, another way of ensuring consistency across features, is to employ a standard template for describing features. I have long promoted goal-oriented descriptions for features and base my feature descriptions on a simple verb-noun template.

The verb part of the template either describes some action that can be performed by a user of the product; or some internal function of the product. The noun part of the template describes the object (or target) of the action. Together, the verb and noun describe some action that must be perform to achieve a goal.

• Enter reservation 
• Amend reservation 
• Cancel reservation 
• Add accommodation charge 
• List guests 

Naturally all the nouns used in feature descriptions should be defined in the glossary.

• Accommodation: A temporary place to stay. May be provided by a room, suite, chalet or dormitory. 
• Guest: A person who occupies accommodation at a hotel. 
• Reservation: The arrangement by which accommodation is secured in advance of a stay.

Qualifying Features
It is often necessary to further qualify the nouns included in feature descriptions. One way to do this is by adding additional nouns (or noun phrases) that clarify the object of the verb. These additional nouns may be drawn from existing glossary definitions or, depending on how frequently they are used, they may require their own glossary entries.

• Enter accommodation reservation
• Add accommodation charge to guest’s account
• List dormitory guests

Traditionally, nouns are qualified using adjectives (or adjective phrases) so it is quite natural to add adjectives to feature descriptions.

• Enter new reservation
• Amend existing reservation
• Cancel duplicate reservation
• Add provisional accommodation charge
• List overseas guests

Verbs may also be qualified using adverbs (or adverb phrases).

• Manually cancel reservation
• Automatically add accommodation charge
• Periodically list guests

If required, features can be further qualified by adding conditions that must be true before the feature is invoked.

• Cancel reservation if the guest is a no-show
• Add accommodation charge at 2am each day
• List guests that checked in last week

Basing feature descriptions on the verb-noun template, coupled with careful qualification of verbs and nouns, can help to remove ambiguity from the features.

• Enter new accommodation reservation
• Amend existing accommodation reservation 
• Manually cancel duplicate accommodation reservation 
• Automatically cancel accommodation reservation if the guest is a no-show 
• Automatically add provisional accommodation charge at 2am each day 
• Periodically list overseas guests that checked in last week

This concludes the discussion of ambiguity for now. Next up is the question “Is there an alternative to the feature that will achieve the same goal?”

The Feature Funnel: The Big Picture

Busy day today so just a short post.

I spent some time visualising the ideas that I have been discussing in my series of posts on the feature funnel and came up with this representation.

So far I have discussed the wishlist, popularity and ambiguity in my posts. The other aspects of the feature funnel will be discussed in later posts.

The Feature Funnel: Qualifying the Wishlist (Part 1)

In my last post I introduced the Feature Funnel and discussed ways of managing a wishlist of product features. In this and later posts, I will introduce a series of questions that can be used to refine and filter the wishlist.

Is the requested feature popular?
It is obvious that frequently requested features should grab the attention of product developers. Tools for managing user wishlists such as User Echo allow users to vote for wishlist items (for a good example of this in use see the Cinta Notes product roadmap).

The App Store and Android Market both allow users to review and rate products but don't permit users to add wishlist items. As a result, it is quite common to see users requesting features in their review or even qualify their rating with something like “...would give it five stars if it had...”.

The Feature Funnel: A Tool for Managing User Wishlists

The Sales Funnel
Many sales professionals are familiar with the systematic approach to selling a product or service known as the “sales funnel”.

The sales funnel employs the metaphor of a funnel (wide neck at the top, narrow spout at the bottom) to represent the dwindling number of sales prospects that remain after each step in the sales qualification process. Unqualified prospects enter the neck of the funnel and paying customers emerge from its spout.

Each step in the qualification process filters out some of the potential customers based on criteria such as the customer’s need or the customer’s preference for competing products and services.

During a recent course, I was trying to explain the qualification that should be applied to a “wishlist” of software requirements so I drew this picture on the whiteboard.

Comics and Infographics

Words are often not the best way to present complex or tedious material. Because I don't draw well, I often discuss the benefits of engaging a professional graphic designer during my modelling and analysis courses.

What could be more complex (and tedious) than describing the design trade-off's involved in the development of a modern web browser? Rising to the challenge, Google manages to bring the subject alive in their Chrome comic book. Might be worth considering this approach next time you have a complex proposal to present to a less than enthusiastic group.

Only a few weird souls find learning English grammar exciting!  Again rising to the challenge this infographic from BlueGlass and Copyblogger manages to inject some interest and humour into the subject. Imagine presenting your next business case this way.

Software Quality Bloopers

I can't resist snapping examples of software quality bloopers.

It all started with this MS Windows registry error message that obliterated the details of my Introduction to Software Quality course.

Radar Charts

I have always been a fan of Ron Jeffries’ Big Visible Charts, “Charts on the wall are many times more effective than charts on a web site or in a fancy slide show. A web site doesn’t push information at us; we have to go look. A slide show always comes with a meeting and a lecture. A wall chart is there when we are, in our face, always visible. Bigger is better.”

I would probably add that many people never open that attachment to your email with all the important Excel charts summarising the monthly status report!

One of the big visible charts I use a lot is a radar chart. If you follow that link to Wikipedia you’ll discover that a radar chart is “a graphical method of displaying multivariate data in the form of a two-dimensional chart of three or more quantitative variables represented on axes starting from the same point.” Very impressive but what does it mean in practice?