Free tool · built and run by Studio NPV
Scope Cutter
Cut your feature list down to a first version you can actually ship. About ten minutes, using the methods product managers use, and nothing leaves your browser.
How it decides
Six methods, not a coin flip
The Kano model
Noriaki Kano, 1984
Two questions per feature, how users would feel with it and without it, read through the standard Kano table. It separates what users expect from what delights them and what they wouldn’t notice.
Story mapping
Jeff Patton
Features hang off the steps of your user’s journey. Your first release has to be a walking skeleton: thin, but complete from the first step to the last.
Appetite
Basecamp, Shape Up
You decide how many weeks a first version is worth. Time stays fixed and scope gives way, so the tool suggests what to cut when the build runs over.
Riskiest assumption first
Lean Startup practice
Whatever tests the belief your idea depends on goes in first, because learning early is worth more than polish.
Do it by hand
Concierge and Wizard of Oz MVPs
What you can do yourself for your first customers launches by hand, the way Zappos bought each pair of shoes after the order. You build it once it’s proven.
Value for effort
Adapted from RICE
What’s left is ordered by value over effort into a queue for your next release, so you know what to build second.
Kano is designed for asking users. Here you answer for them, so the result is only as good as your picture of them. It works best after talking to five or so. Effort is your own estimate.
Read: what belongs in a first version