synoppsys: The Kano questionnaire is useful (at least on a small scale) as a supplement to the more qualitative data revealed in interviews and focus groups about features that are important to users.
I recently read about the Kano Questionnaire in Mike Cohn’s book, Agile Estimating and Planning and in another article by Cohn. It seemed like a really great way to determine quantitatively what user stories are important to our customers/users. Using Kano’s matrix, you can cross-check an individual’s response to a functional question (the feature is in the system) and to a dysfunctional question (the feature is not in the system) into one of three types of features: 1) must haves; 2) linear (the more, the better); 3) exciters and delighters (cool stuff the user doesn’t know that he wants).
In 2007, we released a web application at the college level for academic advisors to track student contacts. Now it’s being considered for release at the university level. We entered a pilot phase and just finished up focus groups with the participants. From the focus groups and various other surveys, we were able to glean an initial list of user stories. We wanted to confirm our qualitative research with hard data (as we write a proposal for funding) about what features are most important to the users.
We sent a questionnaire to pilot participants with 3 Kano-type questions. We picked three stories that emerged from focus groups that we wanted to confirm quantitatively.
