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What needs are

Needs are the outcomes or goals your stakeholders care about. They are the “why” behind the features you are considering, and the pivot of a Weighted project: stakeholders rate how much they want each need, and features are rated on how much they deliver each one. Nothing is scored against anything else. Good needs are outcome-focused, not solution-focused. Instead of “build a mobile app”, write “field staff can work away from a desk”. Direct projects have no Needs tab.
Your project may call these objectives or something else. See Vocabulary.

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Adding a need

  1. Open the Needs tab
  2. Click Add need
  3. Give it a title and, optionally, a category and a description
  4. Save
Category is free text with a list of the categories already in use, so a project settles on its own handful of groupings. The tab groups needs by category, and a category can be renamed in place from its header. There is no limit on the number of needs, but 3 to 8 tends to give the clearest analysis: stakeholders can rate them thoughtfully, and coverage stays legible.

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Evidence

Each need can carry links that back it: research notes, support tickets, dashboards, anything with a URL. Open the need and add a link with an optional label. Evidence does not affect any score. It is there so that a reader of the Decision Report, or a stakeholder deciding how to rate, can see where the need came from.

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Reading the cards

Each need is a card. Once the project has stakeholder answers and features, every card gains a footer with two readings:
  • Importance: the weighted average of the ratings given so far, 1 to 5, with “N of M answered” while some stakeholders have not yet responded. Abstentions count as answered but not as ratings.
  • Delivery: how many features currently deliver this need on Coverage, or an amber No feature yet when nothing does.
The tab header carries a meter of how many needs are delivered by at least one feature. A need nothing delivers is the clearest signal in the project: either a feature is missing from your list, or the need does not belong in this cycle.

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Editing and deleting

Click a need to edit its title, category, description and evidence. Deleting a need removes every rating stakeholders gave it and every coverage link to it. This cannot be undone.

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Tips

  • Write the description as if for a stakeholder who will rate the need without you in the room. The voting portal shows it.
  • Keep needs at one level of abstraction. A list that mixes “platform reliability” with “fix the export timeout” produces ratings nobody can compare.
  • The assistant can propose a first set of needs from a description of the decision. See AI in Weivo.