A product feature is defined as:

In the simplest terms, a product can be described as something that customers consider valuable enough to pay for. It is an item, tool, environment, or even a service for which buyers would be willing to pay. A feature by contrast is a part of a product. It is one of the considerations that make the latter valuable enough to the customer for them to pay.

The difference between products and features might appear clear-cut, but that is not the reality. Debate on the difference between the two has been on for years and it’s still ongoing. Some product managers are faced with the dilemma of wrapping their heads around the difference.

Features Can Be Products

Think of a product as a collection of different mini-products. A feature, on the other hand, is a mini-product under the larger one.

What looks to one company as a product may be nothing more than a feature to another. For example, a processor in an HP or Apple computer is a product to its manufacturer but no more than a computer feature for the end-consumer of that computer, its merely a feature. In the same way, the silicon present in the CPU is a product to the manufacturer but only a feature of the latter.

Another often-quoted example is the reference by Steve Jobs to Dropbox as a feature. However, the creators of the app consider it as a standalone product.  Both views are correct in terms of what their respective products are meant to do. Dropbox was created to enable seamless file sharing and storage across different devices, including Apple’s. You may want to treat features the same way you do products to make them more valuable.

Lifecycle Applies

All products have a lifecycle, phases that they pass through. The individual stages that are involved usually differ from one author to the other. However, the most important ones include:

  • Discovery
  • Definition
  • Development
  • Delivery
  • Decline

Features should also follow phases similar to the foregoing. This will enable you to make the best decisions regarding them.

A feature should go through a process involving discovery, delivery, and market adoption. Take your time to learn from customers, including those of your rivals, to ascertain the features they deem valuable before proceeding to develop and deliver.

As is the case with products, there will also come a time when you’d need to retire some features. This is, in part, useful for preventing feature bloat and making things more manageable. Paying attention to the phases a feature goes through helps in identifying the stage it is in at a time. This knowledge guides you in the right approach to adopt at every point.

Metrics are Necessary

Another way you want to deal with features as products is by assigning specific metrics to them. Ideally, there must a goal or goals for every feature that you choose to work on. These must link to product goals, which, in turn, are usually influenced by business goals. Metrics are useful for knowing how well a feature is doing toward achieving its set goals. They help to assess the likelihood of attaining those goals. Feature usage is especially important. It is a category of metrics that evaluate how engaged users are with a feature. Low usage can tell us different things depending on the particular feature.

Final Words

Understanding the relationship between features and products is vital for avoiding the frustration of what you thought of as a product being termed a feature. It gives you more confidence when presenting the items on your roadmap to an audience.

The product vs. feature debate is mostly about perceptions – the context influences the difference between the two. The angle you are thinking from determines whether you think they are completely different, or otherwise. As a product manager, your main focus should be on delivering winning products. Useful features can help make that possible.

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A product’s features are the main characteristics that help it stand out in even the most crowded market, by offering unique value to users.

For example, the features of a new marketing platform may include advanced email-automation or a groundbreaking UI. Specific features may be the driving force behind the creation of a product, or they can be added during the development process.

A product feature is defined as:

A product feature is defined as:

How to prioritize product features?

Product features can be prioritized based on a prioritization framework. RICE scoring, KANO model, and story mapping are just three of the most widely used prioritization frameworks.

What are features of a product?

The features of a product refers to the capability and appearance of a product. The features of a product are what make the product and what defines the product’s functionality.

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A product feature is defined as:
You can customize the kanban statuses per your requirements in Chisel’s kanban board. It will help you manage tasks and keep your work organized.

Kanban boards are a beneficial tool for managing tasks during development cycles. They provide insight into which items need more attention than others based on their position on the board at any given time. While also providing visibility across all stakeholders. 

It ensures every team member has up-to-date information. The information is about different aspects of a project’s status without access to one person’s perspective. It makes your collaborative efforts much more effortless.

Waterfall

The waterfall methodology is a stage-based developmental framework, where the entire product’s development gets completed in linear stages. Unlike agile frameworks that deliver product iterations and are continuous processes based on user feedback. 

The waterfall takes a linear approach to deliver the finished product. You can only incorporate updates after completing each phase with no flexibility or changes until then.

Waterfall provides a more rigorous documentation process than agile. It has been adopted less lately due to the increased emphasis on customer-centric product development.

Waterfall requires more stringent documentation that will be obsolete with future updates. However, its rigor makes implementation more effortless for those experienced. (Who are not well versed in coding languages or programming skills.)

Who’s Responsible for Designing the Product Feature?

The responsibility for making the best feature lies on the team. The team will always be a mix of designers, software engineers, product managers, product owners, and sometimes marketers.

Check out Chisel’s team radar pillar that makes team collaboration more effortless than ever.

The product team leader is usually the product manager or product owner. 

What’s the difference between product managers and product owners?

Product managers are in charge of the overall strategy, while the owners take care of the development.

However, there is often a close relationship between these two roles. They work together on every critical decision for the product.

What are the Best Practices for Shipping Product Features?

Trick question: there isn’t. It’s dependent on who’s working on features. All methodologies emphasize researching the customers’ needs, developing as quickly as possible, analyzing user behavior, iterating the product’s characteristics, and repeating that process.

A product feature is defined as:

What Are the Types of Product Features?

Tangible Attributes:

A product’s tangibility is the first and most significant feature. Like a bike, book, pencil, or table, it can be handled, seen, and its physical existence felt.

Intangible Attributes:

Conversely, the product could be an intangible service like banking, insurance, or maintenance.

Exchange value:

A product’s third feature is that it must have monetary worth.

Every product, tangible or intangible, must have an exchange value. The product must be worthy of being traded between sellers and buyers for a mutually agreed-upon price.

Advantages of Utility:

Another crucial feature of a product is that it should have a utility. There are sets of possible benefits or utilities.

Distinctive Characteristics:

Another key feature from the marketing standpoint is that the product must have distinguishing characteristics, i.e., it should be distinguishable from other items.

Various types of design and packaging can aid in creating a consumer perception of product differentiation.

Customer Satisfaction:

Another marketing element is that the products should be able to provide value fulfillment to the customers for whom you designed them.

Bonus: Click here to learn about driving a great customer experience strategy.

Business Need Satisfaction:

A product’s final and equally significant quality is that it must meet a business requirement to be considered a product.

The most basic business need is to profit from the product offered. It must have the ability to generate revenue.

How to Prioritize Product Features? 

You can find a few brilliant and straightforward ways to delve deeply into product decisions and prioritize products, upgrades, and ideas.

To avoid choice confusion, use the group features themes:

Breaking down individual features into smaller groupings is necessary before you begin prioritizing them. When deciding on projects to work on, choice paralysis is a serious problem. Using “themes” as a feature is one of the simplest methods to avoid it.

Themes are collections of elements that work together to achieve a common purpose, product vision, or overall strategy. They assist you in ensuring that you’re focusing on the essential features. While also avoiding the problems that come with having too many selections.

Distinguish between product characteristics based on:

Suppose personal prejudices and recent events can lead us astray. In such cases, among the first things you should do is take a more honest look at your characteristics. That includes examining each one against a set of criteria and speaking with certain members of your team:

Feasibility: How technically feasible is the feature based on your current resources? Talk to your technical teammates, engineers, UI designers, and front-end developers to determine what action to take.

Desirability: Is it anything that your clients genuinely want? Use every tool at your access to determine if this is something your users want. That entails speaking with researchers, UX designers, marketers, and customer service representatives and reviewing any user testing and validation you’ve already conducted.

Viability: How would this feature fit or support your broader strategy and market demands? Consult with appropriate executives and product managers to learn how this feature includes a larger ecology, including your own (additional features, initiatives, and goals).

Customers, segments, and industries:

Great product managers can recognize the demands of certain groups of customers. Each consumer and sector will have different needs. Mass-production without segmentation is no longer profitable in the age of personalization.

You can use a CRM to split product feature requests for:

A product feature is defined as:

Various industries (e.g. SaaS vs eCommerce)

Various Segments (e.g. B2B SaaS vs B2C SaaS)

Client Types (for example, B2B SaaS with 100+ workers vs. B2B SaaS with fewer than ten people)

Then prioritize according to the most profitable or strategic subset for the company.

Take the RICE Method a step further:

Sometimes features are complex and require more detailed prioritization than an essential grid can provide. The RICE approach is a great way to score priority in this scenario. 

The RICE scoring model is a priority methodology that uses four aspects to help product managers decide which products, features, and other activities to prioritize on their roadmaps. Reach, impact, confidence, and effort are the four factors that make up the acronym RICE.

A product feature is defined as:
Discover Chisel’s prioritization drivers tool today! It lets you customize drivers and their weight. This priority score can help you prioritize product features effectively.

To score features using customized criteria, use a priority scorecard:

The RICE method isn’t the sole method for scoring your features appropriately. To meet your stakeholders’ demands, you may need to modify the parameters by which you score. A simple priority scorecard might be a preferable alternative in this scenario.

A Priority Scorecard begins with a proposed list of criteria and their “weights” (essentially, how important are they as a percentage of the overall project?) You must begin by compiling this list on your own and seek feedback from stakeholders to fine-tune the figures.

Requests received:

The number of requests is another technique to prioritize features. Though it may appear self-evident, you’d be amazed how many organizations tend to overlook it. You can’t invest time and money creating a product that won’t generate enough revenue to justify the original expenditure. 

As a result, particularly if you’re a small company or startup, you must always conduct market research and collect input from your clients. Additionally, prioritize your features based on the number of requests.

Bonus: For skilled prioritizing tips, click here.

Monetary worth:

This process allows you to break down your product into its financial value. Evaluate how a new or different feature contributes to your overall strategy and product requirements in this regard. 

After gathering all the information, talk to other significant executives or product managers. This step is to see if the new feature is worthwhile considering your consumer base and industry. Other factors to consider are rules, legal concerns, finances, and the effort necessary to make such modifications.

What Are the Examples of Product Features?

The fabric of a georgette dress, like the battery life of a laptop, is a feature. A feature is when your product works with other products. A rose gold frame or casing is an excellent option.

Another example would be the features of a Laptop. Physical attributes (ultra-thin 18 coil structure), functionalities (charges three devices in one go), and additional value features are all product features. 

For instance, the 20-Minute PPC Work Week is a product feature of WordStream Advisor. It is an expert system of unique, personalized recommendations based on users’ account data. WordStream Advisor identifies areas of AdWords and Bing Ads accounts where you get to make instant improvements.

In WordStream’s example, features specifically address typical challenges customers pose in the target market, such as improving the paid search workflow for busy small-business entrepreneurs.

You can plan, develop, and implement the features of the product. The 20-Minute PPC Work Week didn’t happen by chance, and neither did WordStream’s engineering team. WordStream discovered a common pain issue among its target market and set out to construct a solution that resolved it.