Sunsetting Features In Web Product Development Process

December 14, 2007 – 11:57 pm

When you spend hours and hours writing code and developing a product, you may become attached. You may treat a section of code or a filename with tenderness and may never want to let it go.

Hmmm, I just read a post from the Google AdSense blog:

http://adsense.blogspot.com/2007/12/farewell-onsite-advertiser-sign-up.html

Ben raised an excellent point: “sunsetting” features is sometimes necessary to improve the overall ROI of a product. Of course, phasing out features does not require deletion from your library of tricks.

Just as companies like Toyota constantly research customer need, I also use Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to determine what customers really want and what they really need.

I often remove features based on the metrics and remove emotion from the design process… most of the time. ;)

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Primezero Research and Innovation is an engineering and semantics workshop, specializing in product development and rapid prototyping since 1996.

Primezero develops online learning tools for math, science, Mandarin Chinese teachers, as well as software for bloggers.

Major projects include: Arizona AIMS Mathematics Test Preparation Web Site for teachers and students, Primezero Chinese Tools 2008, and pzphp (open source toolsets) on Google Code, Chinese Seal Chop Widget for WordPress, Chinese Seal Chop Google Gadget, etc, etc, etc...

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