Creating Bookhuddle.com, a website for discovering, organizing, and sharing book information

Step 4 Identify the core features of the application

Identify the core features of the application. These are the essential features that the application requires to be useful and meet the objectives for the service. Everything else will be dependent on these features being in place.

For Bookhuddle, the core features included:
- extensive database of books
- ability to search for books
- user profiles
- user book lists for users to organize their personal library, books they've read, want to read, are reading, etc.
- user search
- groups or book clubs for users to organize with friends and discuss books

Following an iterative process is useful to help prioritize the work, define frequent achievable goals or milestones for the team, get features released frequently to users, and get feedback from users to fine tune the site.