Feature-driven development: How to build user-centric products

Imagine you're tasked with creating a mobile app for a bustling ecommerce platform. Instead of being overwhelmed by the project, you take help from our hero: Feature-Driven Development (FDD). This genius approach takes center stage and becomes the guiding light.

You start by breaking down every task into bite-sized chunks that are manageable - like user authentication, product search, and secure payment processing. Each of these features becomes a well-defined and prioritised unit of work, helping your development team to focus on delivering customer-centric elements incrementally.

This is what Feature-Driven Development is. It's a systematic and customer-driven approach that turns complex projects into a series of achievable milestones. With FDD, we harness the power of these features to drive the quest for efficient and customer-focused product development.

What is feature-driven development?

• It is a software development methodology.
• Feature-driven development is a way of building software step by step. Instead of doing everything at once, we focus on making small parts called features.
• The main goal is to show these small parts to the client quickly, like pieces of a puzzle.
• FDD is about being flexible and making changes as we go. Everyone keeps an eye on how things are going by checking off a to-do list and making sure everyone knows the progress. The important thing is to keep getting better and showing progress step by step
• This process is frequent and happens in small increments with proper documentation.
• The development is scalable, model-driven, team-based, client-centric, iterative, incremental, and quick making the process efficient.

Key principles of feature driven development

1. Feature List

• It guides the development team, product managers, and stakeholders through the scope and requirements.
• Features are identified based on stakeholder’s requirements, user needs, and the overall project vision.
• Features are categorised and prioritised, often using techniques like MoSCoW (Must-haves, Should-haves, Could-haves, and Wont-haves).
• It provides a clear roadmap for development and helps in effective resource allocation and scheduling.
  

2. Overall Model

• The Overall Model in FDD refers to the high-level design and architecture of the entire system.
• It defines the structure of the system, sub-systems, modules, and their interactions.
• It guides the development team in understanding the technical aspects and dependencies within the system.
• The initial modeling involves defining the major components and their relationships.
• Iterative refinement as features are developed, ensuring the overall model evolves with the project.
• It facilitates a shared understanding of the systems architecture among team members.
• Supports efficient feature development by providing a framework for integration.
• Also helps in identifying potential challenges and dependencies early in the development process.
  

3. Feature teams

• Feature driven development teams are cross-functional teams helping with the development of specific features within the project.
• The teams are responsible for end-to-end development of assigned features, from requirements to implementation and testing.
• It fosters collaboration among team members with diverse skills (developers, testers, designers) to ensure comprehensive coverage. The teams are formed based on the expertise required for each feature, ensuring a balanced skill set. This way team members collaborate closely, often co-located, to enhance communication and coordination. It enhances accountability and ownership of specific features.

Why you should choose feature-driven development?

• Due to the regular changes made in the product and the addition of small features, the developers are able to track their performance and fix the bugs as they arise.
  
• Clients are less likely to wait for the updates due to the constant iteration made on the product which improves customer satisfaction.
  
• For huge teams with big clientele, it is much more beneficial to opt for feature-driven development because of the detailed documentation of the work done.
  
• Due to the same reason, it is easier to scale, and the number of meetings organized decreases, saving time.
  
• This methodology is the ultimate game changer as the users indicate what features they want, and it helps the development team in future feature planning.
  
• The team is able to work on niche pain points of the users and deliver the solutions within 2 to 10 days.

The development process

There are five steps involved in the feature development process.

Step zero - Domain walkthrough

• It begins with the development team gaining insights into the client’s business, goals, and expectations.
  
• The client’s pain points are pointed out and it helps in deciding the key features of the product.

1. Develop an overall model
   

• The goal of the software development product and the pain points are outlined.
  
• The ideas are brainstormed around the targeted audience's preference.
  
• The model should be open-ended in order to keep the way open for other opportunities otherwise if the developers go into too much detail then the product will only cater to a small fraction of a particular audience.
  

2. Feature list creation
   

• The process of feature list creation involves pinpointing the customer needs and business value.
  
• A detailed document is prepared at this stage including the feature name, a brief description, and dependencies on the other features, etc.
  

3. Plan by feature
   

• At this stage, all the team members collaborate to develop a map of the project to discuss the hours, resources, and deadlines.
  
• All the features are broken down into several small tasks and the number of hours, efforts, and budget required is estimated.
  

4. Design by feature
   

• Once the features have been planned, the product manager or the chief programmer oversees the process and delegates the task to specific people.
  
• This way, the complete team starts to work iteratively and together to design the features.

5. Build by feature

• Here, all the teams work cross-functionally with each other.
  
• A couple of experiments are done along with taking the feedback from the users to get an idea of the future iterations. 

All of these steps help in building products that are scalable and tailored to users' needs. But, should the product development always be user-led or there is another approach to it, let’s see.

Why you should go with a user-centric and not user-led product delivery approach?

The users are not always right!
I know, a bold statement but a necessary one.

You see, if a development team starts to build a product that is led by the user's opinions, they might end up with a product that doesn’t meet their needs in short, jack of all trades and master of none. Just because users tell you what they want doesn't mean they actually know what they need. It can get pretty confusing, right?

So, what do you do?
You focus on user-centric product delivery rather than user-led product delivery.

Let’s take an example,

Ryanair is a low-cost airline group. Due to their poor service, they received a lot of criticism and they ignored them all and focused on keeping the prices affordable for the people because that is what their aim is. This is why they became one of Europe's biggest and most profitable airlines.

How you can implement the user-centric approach to your product?

• Identify the underlying needs of the users and then find solutions. As Benjamin Ramhofer puts it, you need to observe your users and how they interact with your product.
  
• Start with market research and observe your users.
  
• Uncover their true needs, which can then be confirmed through prototyping and customer feedback.

Once the objective of the product and what needs the app is going to cater to are set, we head over to the development team to make this idea into a reality and implement everything that we learned here.

Collaborative teamwork in feature-driven development

There are several members involved in the development team but only six of them are primary to the development and absolutely necessary.

1. Chief programmer

The chief programmer heads the complete projects be it the coding, technical challenges, or any other issues arising in the project.

2. Project manager ‍

All the communication between the teams, handling project planning, meeting the deadlines and that everything goes according to the features planned before is looked after by the Project manager.

3. Chief architect‍

The chief architect looks after the backbone of the project. It means to design software structure, define technical standards, and ensure that each feature integrates into another seamlessly. The structure of the software will determine the scalability hence crafted delicately.

4. Development manager‍

They oversee the resources required and relocate them to build the software. They also look after maintaining a productive and collaborative environment for the team.

5. Class owner‍

The class owner watches over a specific class or group of related classes within the codebase. It is like ensuring that every code is as per the feature and seamlessly integrates with others.

6. Domain expert‍

The domain expert makes sure that the software being developed aligns software industry or domain it is intended for.
The development team is the highlight of the product, their determination and resilience make everything happen. That is why you need a team that is ready to contribute to every area of development and expert in their fields.

Why choose outsource development for your feature-driven development needs?

• Outsourcing your software development needs helps you to get access to the best talent pool.
  
• With feature-driven development, the outsourcing team has specialised expertise as they have already worked on several similar projects.
  
• Due to my experience, the delivery of the software is quick, within the specified time, and under budget.
  
• The return on investment is higher as the founder doesn't have to hire more individuals who could re-iterate the product continuously.

Feature-driven development is one of the top choices for the software development. In case you would like to go forth and see how much potential your software holds, have a word with us.

Case study

Let us talk about one of the biggest music streaming platforms, Spotify. When it comes to choosing a music app Spotify stands out among the other players because of the features and how it solves the underlying problem prevalent in other music platforms.

1. Develop an overall model

• Spotify built a scalable architecture that had a vast library of songs, user preferences, and playlists.
• This model allowed seamless integration of new features without disrupting the core functionality of the platform. ​ ​

2. Feature list creation

• Spotify observes your behavior on the app and takes feedback from you to build a dynamic feature list that evolves based on industry trends, and business goals.
• It is regularly updated and continues to introduce bold features.
  

3. Plan by feature

• Spotify organises development teams around the most useful features and best user experiences. 
• Cross-functional teams collaborate on specific features to ensure end-to-end ownership and deliver the features quickly.

4. Design by feature 

• Spotify has some remarkable user-centric features such as personalised playlists. 
• This user-centric design approach contributes to the overall growth of the platform.

5. Build by feature

• Spotify's development team built and deployed features iteratively focusing on continuous improvement.
• This iterative development approach enhances user engagement.

Spotify proves that it is vital to have an effective process for developing features, constantly improving them, making them user-friendly, and being able to adapt, things that are at the heart of feature-driven development.

Just as Spotify has mastered the art of creating high-quality and engaging user experiences, our development team is dedicated to building your product with the same level of discipline and commitment, let’s talk.