Software development professionals keep a long list with suggestions and feature requests. One or two. There aren’t enough hours in the day, or enough developers to do it all. We need to know where to concentrate and what features to develop. But there is a deeper problem. We all believe that more features make software better and help sell it. This sentiment is dangerous and misleading at best. Software is not better if you add new features randomly and rely on a large number of them. Trust us. We’ve been there.
Development is our core competency as a company. We used to think of ourselves as a development company and not a product company. Because we focused on development (thinking features sell software), previous versions of ActiveCollab were all about adding new features.ActiveCollab 4 was the most feature-packed release of them all – which, to our surprise, didn’t make our users as happy as we thought it would, and thus the sales didn’t grow as we expected it to.ActiveCollab 4 was so configurable that you could do pretty much anything you wanted, but it came at a cost – the app was intimidating to new users. It was easy for them to get over the learning curve. However, many people never returned to their trial. It’s worse to not improve software and add things people want. It’s not easy to add new features without considering how they affect the overall experience. How we design and develop new features now
We changed our product philosophy and how we develop new features. We now have a roadmap for upcoming features. Choosing them is a smooth process. We gather feedback from our support channels (chat, email, forms) and store it in a spreadsheet.
We analyze the results to determine how often each feature is used.
The product owner decides what to do next.
We meet to discuss how the feature should be implemented.
Based on the meeting notes, the designer creates a Sketch prototype while developers create an attack plan.
Developers take the design and begin developing.
After the feature is completed, it undergoes quality assurance for bug fixing.
Support writes the documentation and marketing informs people about the release.
Part I: Gathering Feedback and Analyzing Results
Our support team plays an important role in the design of new features. They’re in contact with our users every day and get first-hand feedback about their needs.We receive feedback through 7 different channels:Our support email at [email protected], where we get everything from technical and pre-sale questions to suggestions.
Emails and newsletters for onboarding that people can respond to
TwitterandFacebookaccounts that serve for support, feedback, and promotion.
We use surveys to get your input on how to design a feature.
Chat is where we can talk to both existing users and new prospects.
When a user cancels their account, they will receive in-app feedback and an exit page.
We record every suggestion on these channels in our Customer Feedback spreadsheet. To make filtering easier, we categorize every request. ActiveCollab was designed with some requests in mind (like chat, timeline view and recurring tasks). We knew they were important, so we sketched them.
How to Create the Right Features with Limited Resources
