A product I once worked on completely failed when it got into the customers hands and the business eventually went under, for one key engineering reason.  The product had too many customer dissatisfiers (missing key features, broken workflow, etc) because customer feedback wasn't used to prioritize the work.  Recently my team here at Microsoft had a huge backlog of features, bugs to fix, new ideas, etc and we were getting dizzy just trying to stack rank it.  So we used KANO Analysis to bucket the work into four categories and understand the customer value to help decide which tradeoffs to make.

Kano analysis is a quality measurement tool used to prioritize customer requirements based on their impact to customer satisfaction. [John Carter, isixsigma.com]

Which raised the question, what exactly is a dissatisfier?  For that matter, when you're developing any product and have a backlog list of new features, customer requests, bugs, etc, how do you prioritize which to focus your efforts on?  Enter KANO Analysis.  A quick and easy tool to classify the value output of work that can be quite powerful in helping make tradeoffs between those units of work on your product backlog.

We intuitively make subjective calls on the return of investment of our work all the time.  KANO Analysis is simply a systematic theory that puts a name to the face and provides a common framework we can work with.

Dissatisfiers
A dissatisfier is any issue that simply annoys the customer.  This includes anything that flies in the face of what a customer would expect from your product.  For example:

  • Expected Features
    Characteristics people just assume your product has.  Like word processing software being able to print, change font styles, find text in the document, etc.  These form a "min bar", the minimal feature set required to sell such a product.  Any car must be able to move fast enough, have locking doors, chairs to sit in, headlights, etc.  If any of these little items are missing, it could seriously prevent adoption of the whole product.
  • Bugs
    Features the product was designed to perform, but anomalies occur.  Like a stereo system that randomly cuts out when playing a CD.  If you do implement a feature, it should be done well and not be annoying.  A car engine that starts and seams to run fine, but occasionally stalls is an unacceptable bug.  It was obviously designed to run smoothly, but doesn't.  "The software does what it was programmed to do, not what it was intended to do." [Dawn Coad]

Either expected features or bugs can be Blocking Issues, the worst kind of dissatisfier.  These cause broken workflow that literally prevents the user from being able to use the whole product.  Like a car missing a steering wheel or headlights, or a word processing program that doesn't print.

It is critical to the success of any product that the dissatisfiers are minimized.  Too many dissatisfiers will kill the sales or use of any product.  Just removing the dissatisfiers by eliminating bugs, having smooth workflow, and meeting the user's expectations, makes a solid foundation for a product.  In order to grow a product (sell upgrades) or supplant competition, much more than just eliminating dissatisfiers is required, which leads us into...

KANO Analysis
My feature team has been using KANO Analysis to group ideas and make decisions on what work to invest in for our next milestones.

Kano Analysis is a systematic method to understand how a customer’s sense of satisfaction is affected when a product or service succeeds or fails to meet either spoken or unspoken customer expectations. This approach was developed by Dr. Noriaki Kano of Tokyo Rika University. Dr. Kano’s model is usually shown in the form of the Kano Diagram... [pacePILOT]

Along the horizontal axis is Degree of Implementation (or "Amount of Effort") and along the vertical axis is Customer Satisfaction (or "Effective Output").  All flow has a slope >= 0 so generally, as any feature is implemented more fully (or better), customer satisfaction is improved.  The question is, what is the ROI (return on investment) of our potential work?

Exciters are highly valuable features that delight customers, even with little implementation.  These are "front of the box" features that typically set your product apart from the competition.  They're typically hard to discover or require unique assets.  For example, Microsoft Office's tight integration between the suite of products, or the Honda VTEC Engine.  Exciters are also features that get your dev team excited to work on ‘something cool’ and keep team moral high.

Satisfiers are the bulk of "normal" features that increase customer satisfaction proportional to the amount of work put into them.  Like the acceleration performance of a decent car, a reasonable amount of effort results in a reasonably equal gain.  Frequently these come from customer suggestions.  They’re also typically necessary to keep up with competition.

Dissatisfiers are features customer just expect to be there, or defects where the product is designed to perform a task that it doesn't (a bug).  Some of these cause broken workflow and are considered to be blocking issues, in some cases preventing the user from using the entire product.

Indifferent features are issues customers just don't care about.  Perhaps you may think they're cool, but the general customer doesn't really care.  Many times indifferents are required for another feature (like improving a backend library).  For example, the differential gear in a car... you may think the distribution ratio and response is impressive, but most customers just don't care.

Features tend to migrate between classifications over time.  Yesterday's Exciter is frequently today's Satisfier and tomorrows Dissatisfier.  Like electric locks or cup holders in cars, at one time they were an exiting feature, then they became a good plus, and now customers expect them and would be annoyed if they weren't there.

Where to Invest
If you're planning features for vNext of your product, and have a big long list of feature ideas (a backlog), which do you invest in?  Take that big list of ideas, and mark "E", "D", "S", or "I" by each item to classify them.  You'll need a couple of Exciters to "put on the front of the box", then balance work between the satisfiers (you're bread & butter) and removing dissatisfiers (fill gaps & fix those bugs!), while trying to minimize the indifferents.  Generic projects typically have effort invested in about 30% Exciters, 40% Satisfiers, 25% Dissatisfiers, and 5% Indifferent.

In Conclusion
Everyone naturally applies their intuition to understand return on investment.  KANO Analysis is a theory, a tool, that puts a name to a face and gives you a consistent system for classifying the value of work.  By going through your backlog and classifying your work into one of these four buckets, you're no longer comparing apples to oranges and can make more informed decisions, ultimately making a better product that customers will love.

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