Stop “delighting” your customers
Not all features are equal. Use the Kano Model to stop wasting money on “table stakes” and focus on what actually drives growth.
Most product roadmaps are just lists of features customers asked for. This is how you build a bloated, average product.
The Kano Model proves that features fall into three buckets:
Must-Haves: If missing, they hate you. If present, they feel nothing (e.g., a hotel having hot water).
Performance: More is better (e.g., battery life).
Delighters: Unexpected magic.
You are likely spending 80% of your budget polishing “Must-Haves” that are already good enough. Stop it. You get zero credit for making hot water hotter.
The Prompt
Act as a Product Strategy Consultant (Kano Model framework).
Here are the top 5 initiatives on our roadmap: [Paste List].
1. The Classification: Categorise each into:
- Must-Have (Threshold).
- Performance (Linear).
- Delighter (Exciter).
2. The Audit: Are we over-investing in a "Must-Have" that is already at market parity? (If yes, mark it for a budget cut).
3. The Gap: Do we have at least one "Delighter" that differentiates us from [Competitor], or are we just playing catch-up?
The Executive Upgrade: Subscribers Only
Feature Creep” & “The Bloat.
Engineers and Designers love to perfect things. They will spend 3 months optimising a “Settings” page that 1% of users visit.
As an executive, your job is to be the Editor.
You must ruthlessly cut “Gold Plating” (perfecting the irrelevant) to fund the “Magic” (the features that sell the product).
Here are the two Governance Protocols to clean up the product.
