Idea prioritization is one of the steps of reducing ideas in a Requirements elicitation technique (Brainstorming). To prioritize ideas, The Hundred Dollar test is used widely. The Hundred Dollar test: This method works on the strategy of providing fictional money to the participants as their voting tool. It short lists the worthy ideas or features from a long list created in the earlier stage. When an analyst is working on a project and gathers the requirements, he considers a number of related ideas. Moving onto the further stages of development he needs to shortens this list and extract the most meaningful ideas, now if he consults the stakeholder or the user of the system being developed, he’ll surely get a response of considering all the ideas and not missing even a single one so the analyst finds the “The Hundred Dollar test” more efficient than consulting the user.
Each participant in the panel is given fictional $100. They are asked to spend this money on the ideas of their choice. They may or may not be restricted in using this money such that $100 could be spent on a single idea of the considering ideas list provided (can generate new ideas as well) or $50 on two of them or it can completely be left on their end to use any dollar amount from this hundred dollar on any number of ideas. A notepad is given to each participant to note down their spending on ideas. Additionally, they can be asked to write about why they are passionate about the ideas they choose. After collecting the notes from all the participants, write all the ideas on a whiteboard and make a column which depicts the invested amount on each one. Now consult with the participants in a form of a group and short list the worthiest ideas out of them. If still the list is too long, then you have to conduct this test again by spending a further $100 on this revised list but this time some restrictions are applied such that to spend $50 on 2 of the ideas or $25 on 4.
