How we prioritise feature requests at Full Fabric
Written by Leah Fernandes
Prioritising feature developments and building a product roadmap is always a difficult decision as it involves many factors - time, resources, company vision, customer priorities - and it ends up being a balance between our vision for our product, and the needs of our customers, to constantly evolve and keep up to the standards of the industry.
At Full Fabric, we choose to review all feature requests our customers share and decide how those align with our vision to make our product more efficient, easy to implement and use and ultimately, a vehicle for their success.
What defines a feature request?
To avoid confusion, we thought it would be useful to clearly distinguish a feature request from a bug. A bug is an unforeseen coding flaw that hampers the expected behaviour of an existing feature, causing the latter to stop working or respond in a way other than the supposed🐞 A feature request, though, involves innovation: it's the identification of a need for which no proper solution has been offered, calling for new development, which can be the enhancement of a current functionality, to optimize and/or expand its capabilities or the creation of an entirely new tool. 💡
How do I request a new feature?
Spotted an opportunity for improvement or looking for an entirely new area in Full Fabric? You can contact us and share your needs and ideas at any moment or time.
When making your idea known, it's important to include some of the following details:
A description of what you are looking for
Why is it necessary or why would it be beneficial
An estimate of how often would you need to perform said action
Examples of such a solution in other platforms that you'd like to reference (if applicable)
In short, we need to understand your core problem and challenge. Based on that, we'll confirm whether we already have that functionality or, if not, assess if your request can be added to our development roadmap.
How we prioritise feature developments at Full Fabric
If the feature you're looking for already exists without you knowing or is not currently part of your subscription plan, we'll inform you and go from there. But if it's something we don't have, we'll proceed to discuss it internally.
On a quarterly basis, our Client Success and Product Development teams get together to review the latest requests. Not all of them will come to fruition but we carefully analyse each and every request, evaluate it against our short and long-term plans - as only so many things can fit in - prioritise work, plan it, and then develop in a manner to ensure that the execution is as efficacious and efficient as possible to as many as we can.
We look at different criteria such as impact, complexity or effort to develop a feature and decide on adding it or not to our product roadmap. . Our roadmap is driven by a mix of industry insight and customer feedback, meaning that we generally have a vision of where we want to go and account for that.
Feature requests can have three outcomes:
Added to our roadmap and prioritised;
Added to our roadmap but has not been prioritised;
Is not part of a short mid-term plan for our product;
If your request is green-lighted and added to our planning, we'll notify you, give you an estimated timeframe for development - that would normally range from 3 months up to 6 months - and stay in touch until delivery.
However, if your request is not viable, we'll also notify you and explain why. Most likely, it will still be added to our backlog. We periodically revisit past ideas to reassess if the circumstances have grown favourable in the meantime; if yes, we'll pick them up for development.
In case there's an unavailable feature that we couldn't prioritise but that you hold in high regard, a sprint proposal may be solicited. A sprint is a paid, time-boxed, fixed-scope project that's structured to deliver the capabilities that are most important to you in a predictable and cost-effective manner. Once you ask for a sprint, we'll draft a proposal with a suitable budget, and timeframe and present it to you with the aim of arriving at an agreement. 🤝 Sprints are always subject to consideration and approval by FULL FABRIC.
How can I keep up with the status of a request that I've made?
You're welcome to write to us anytime you're looking for news but you can also stay up to date with our releases through our product update page, updated monthly. Still, we will always write back to the original clients who requested a feature to inform them of its availability. 😊