Kano Analysis
Kano analysis is a great way to define a good balance in your releases by categorising the features on a backlog from a customer's perspective.
Catgorisation
- Threshold - The minimum expectation. As a customer if I do not have this then I will not buy your product. In a smartphone example these might be the ability to make mobile telephone calls and send SMS messaging.
- Linear - Value added. As a customer the more of these features I get then the more utility and value I get from your product. In a smartphone example these might be email, internet, music capabilities that add more value to the device.
- Exciter - Unexpected value. As a customer I didn't expect to get these features, but now I am more inclined to buy your product over a competitor's. In a smartphone example think voice activated assistants, thumbprint recognition, voice recognition and facial recognition as unexpected exciters.
Balanced Releases
To create a balanced release we might need to do all of the Threshold features, but maybe we can trade off a few Linear features to squeeze in a couple of Exciters. This would give us a nice balance of expected, added and unexpected value from each release.
Release Planning
A good way to do this is to firstly categorise which features on a backlog are Threshold, Linear or Exciter and then try to craft out a release with a little of everything to reach a nice balance. The difficulty is always how to get an exciter into a release when there is a lot of schedule pressure, but if it is possible to include at lease one Exciter then will this ease the schedule pressure going forwards?