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Customer Value

The customer satisfaction and customer dissatisfaction ratings attached to a requirement indicate the value the customer places on a requirement. The satisfaction rating measures how happy the customer will be if you success fully deliver an implementation of the requirement, and the dissatisfaction rating measures how unhappy the customer will be if you do not successfully deliver this requirement. See Chapter 10, Writing the Requirements, for a discussion of customer satisfaction and customer dissatisfaction.

We have found that this two-step approach helps people to think more objectively about a requirement rather than mechanically giving it a number on a scale from one to ten or, even worse , a high, medium, or low value.

See Chapter 14, Reviewing the Specification, for a discussion of how to use the customer value ratings to prioritize requirements.

You may decide to substitute Quality Function Deployment (QFD) for this exercise. QFD was developed by the Japanese car industry to ensure that all requirements are expressed "in the voice of the customer." QFD includes a matrix for identifying the customer importance rating. The difference between the customer importance rating and the customer value is that, rather than having one importance rating, customer value has two ways of rating each requirement.

The real test for the Quality Gateway is whether the requirement carries an appropriate rating of the value that the customer places on the requirement.

For a good summary of QFD, see Macaulay, Linda A. Requirements Engineering. Springer, 1996.

Your customer, or a panel made up of the significant stakeholders, sets the ratings with your help. Later, these ratings are weighed against the cost of the requirement and, if necessary, used to help make choices between requirements and assign implementation priorities. Although this activity may seem to be something of an arduous exercise, knowing precisely what value to attach to a requirement is very worthwhile.

For more on customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction ratings, refer to Pardee, William J. To Satisfy and Delight Your Customer. New York, 1996.

If you have a large number of requirements that have a satisfaction/dissatisfaction rating of 5/5, then it indicates that the values have not been thoughtfully rated. As this process is the best opportunity your customer has of letting you know what is important and what is not, we suggest you reject the ratings and ask they be done again. Perhaps for the next rating exercise you should set a limitsay, 75 percentof the number of requirements that may have a "5/5" rating. Make sure that your customer understands your reason for doing so is to understand what is most important to his business; then if you need to make trade-offs, you can choose the most relevant ones. Another reason for attaching customer values to the requirement is to determine what is, and what is not, gold plating .

Gold Plating

The term "gold plating" comes from the domain of bathroom taps. Some people like to have gold-plated taps. Of course, the water does not flow out of gold-plated taps any better than it does from chrome-plated ones. The difference is that the gold-plated tap costs more and might, to some eyes, look a little better. This term has been taken up by the software industry to mean unnecessary features and requirements that wind up contributing more to the cost of a product than they do to its functionality or usefulness .

Let's look at an example. Suppose a requirement for the IceBreaker product states that it shall play a piece of classical music when an engineer logs on. Our knowledge of the IceBreaker product leads us to suspect that this is a gold-plated requirement. It does not appear to contribute to the overall goals of the product. But maybe the truck depot supervisor thinks that the product would be more pleasing to the engineers if it plays music to them.

Does it matter if this requirement is not included?

This requirement is gold plating. It is there because it might be "nice to have." No one would mind if the requirement were omitted from the product. So the first test of gold plating is, "Does it matter if the requirement is not included?" If no one can truly justify its inclusion, then it may be considered gold plating.

The second, and perhaps more reliable, test is to look at the customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction ratings attached to the requirement. A low dissatisfaction rating indicates a requirement that is probably gold plating. After all, when the customer says that it does not matter if this requirement is not included, then he is signaling a requirement whose contribution to the product is not vital .

A low dissatisfaction rating indicates a requirement that is probably gold plating.

We hasten to add that we do not advocate excluding all gold-plated requirements from your product. It is often a good idea to add that little something extra, that extra little bit of chocolate. Sometimes a little gold plating makes a difference to the acceptance of the product. Sometimes we take great pleasure in unnecessary but delightful features. Look at your iPod the next time you charge it. The screen indicates it is charging by displaying a graphic of a battery being filled. Note the speed: The filling speed decreases as the battery nears its full charge. Your screen saver, the sounds attached to alerts, changing screen colors and wallpaper, pictorial and customizable icons: The list of gold-plated items that please us goes on and on.

The point is that you should know whether a requirement is gold plating. If you decide to include a gold-plated requirement, it should be a conscious choice. If you discover that you cannot implement all of the requirements within the project constraints, then gold-plated requirements are prime candidates for exclusion.

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Robertson S., Robertson J.

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