Behind the Scenes of a Feature Request

Product development at bluetelligence is primarily driven by the close cooperation with our customers. This allows us to ensure that our products solve real-world problems that you encounter in your daily business. Therefore, this blog article is dedicated to the topic of how a feature request can be created and how we handle feature requests.

A Few Numbers

• The Performer Suite has 3 releases per year, with which the software is updated.
• We receive about 70-100 feature requests per year.
• About 80% of these were implemented in the past year.
• You benefit from the implementation of your feature request if you have a maintenance contract with us – because then you will receive regular software updates.

4 Steps to Create a Feature Request:

Step 1: Put the idea into concrete terms – instead of workarounds or the abandonment of something you actually need: Simply formulate how we could make your everyday work better with the Performer Suite.

Step 2: Submit a Feature Request – Visit our Help Desk and click on Feature Request. Here you will find a text field where you can describe your desired new feature and then submit it.

Step 3: Apply a priority model – While you resume your daily work with the Performer Suite, the support team at bluetelligence will take action. We will review your idea. For the evaluation, we use the priority model Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF). You can read how this works further down in the article.

Step 4: Final decision – Your idea has been accepted? Then you can look forward to your new feature in one of our future releases, which will be sent to you automatically if you have a maintenance contract with us. We will let you know in which release the new feature will be included as soon as we can estimate that.

How Does the Priority Model Work?

The WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) model is based on a review of user and business value, time factors, risk, feasibility and effort. In several steps, our team evaluates the feasibility. The intermediate steps we go through are shown in this diagram.

Source: https://www.scaledagileframework.com/

The final decision whether we can implement a feature request is based on this formula:

This is what the Elements of the Formula Mean:

• User-Business Value: Would there be disadvantages if the idea is not implemented? What is the benefit for existing customers? Your rating (scale 1-10) is included here.
• Time Criticality: Is there a deadline? Is it time-critical? What are the disadvantages if the Feature Request is not implemented soon?
• Risk Reduction and/or Opportunity Enablement: Are there other advantages behind the idea? Does it even optimize internal processes? Does it offer new business areas?
• Job Duration: Indicates the duration for implementation and is estimated in working days (specification, implementation, testing).

We also like to use this model for internal features and tasks. Functions in the Performer Suite are evaluated and planned in descending order (after WSJF) for future releases.

Read enough and have an idea? Create your first Feature Request now!