The idea behind the Gold Feature technique is that you choosea single feature that is the absolute most important priority for the release,and then you get the entire team to rally around it as the focus. This singlefeature provides enough customer value to hang the entire release on. It iscompelling enough that all of your customers will want to upgrade (and somepotential new customers will be further convinced to purchase). And it issimple enough to communicate from a marketing and competitive point of viewthat it gives your product a noticeable boost.



Ideally you should be able to describe the Gold Feature inone to five words. Some examples might include: 1.) 30% Faster Performance 2.)Import MS Word files or 3.) Double your battery life. It has to be simple andvery compelling - if your release has a long list of features, but you can'tfind a one to five word value message to communicate, it's going to be veryhard to build a marketing campaign and keep your product focus.

The Gold Feature technique is particularly effective if youare on short release cycles or are doing a point release (1.1, 1.2, etc). Manyof your team members may want to include all kinds of other features that canbe of varying interest and value to your customers. If you can get them focusedon the one Gold Feature for the release (and in agreement that everything elseis a "nice to have" priority but that you won't hold up the releasefor it), you'll have a much better chance of success. You'll also have a higherlikelihood of meeting a tight schedule, as you can plan the release with morecertainty if the Gold Feature is the only critical path item.

I've used this technique successfully several times whenworking with clients. One of the releases had a client-side piece of softwarethat was downloaded from the web, and the Gold Feature was "60% smallerdownload," resulting in more rapid adoption by new customers. Another was"Easier signup process", which led to 30% more customers completingthe signup process to try out the product.

Using the Gold Feature technique is an easy and powerful wayto keep your products and your team focused and on track. The result will be agreat product delivered on schedule that provides value to your customers and acompelling marketing message