Project management uses different comprehensive techniques to build customer demands into products. One of the tools that are necessary for achieving this is the Quality Function Deployment (QFD). It is a type of facilitated workshop that aims in determining the critical features to develop a new product.
Facilitated workshops are focused sessions that bring the stakeholders together to identify the product requirements. This type of project management tool is used in defining the cross-functional requirements as well as reconciling the differences of the stakeholders. The Quality Function Deployment (QFD) identifies key characteristics for the new product development. It begins by collecting the needs of the customer (also known as Voice of the Customers). Once the VOCs are collected, they are then sorted and prioritized objectively so that the goals can be set to achieve them.
Another way of collecting ideas is by means of user stories which are short text descriptions. They are developed during the requirements workshop. During the workshop, it describes the stakeholders who benefit from the feature and the goals to be accomplished. This is a great technique that is used together with agile methods.
This term is defined in the 5th edition of the PMBOK.