New Feature – ‘Mummy, where do new features come from?’

TL;DR — This article covers how a new OpenCRM feature comes to life, through our Ideas Board, customer and staff suggestions, and direct chats with our OpenCRM users.

We update OpenCRM with new features all the time, so you and your team will always have the best, most up-to-date tools we can offer. But where do these features actually come from, and how do they make it into your system? That’s exactly what this article is about.

Ideas for New Features

New features are introduced into the main process in one of two ways: as part of our strategic plan and roadmap for the system, or as a suggestion from a customer or member of staff.

Strategic Roadmap

It’s a bit of an understatement to say we have a plan for OpenCRM — both as a system and as a business. Both Phil (our technical director) and I know what we want it to do and what it will take to get there — from general functionality to integrations. Quite often we’ll develop a new feature as part of this roadmap and then spend several years expanding on it. This is especially true of our integrations.

Idea Suggestion

Although I have a picture in my head of what OpenCRM will look like in the future, I know I’m not the only one using it — and certainly not the only one with ideas about how it could be improved. Many of our best features started life because a customer or member of staff made an observation or suggestion.

Reviewing and Deliberation

Any feature suggested by someone other than Phil or me must be reviewed to ensure it aligns with the system’s overall strategic plan. This review takes place during board meetings, but it’s quite informal.

We look at the idea, assess how much interest it has had, and then discuss how long we think it will take to develop and whether it’s right for us. If the answer is positive on both questions, it gets added to our Roadmap — the development time and popularity of a suggestion helps decide how soon we can start working on it.

The Development Process

Once a feature makes it onto the Roadmap, its next stop is with one of our development teams. They’ll work with Phil to fully flesh out the idea, including:

• Figuring out how it’s going to work
• What settings it will need
• How it will impact other areas of the system
• Whether there are any security or permissions questions around it
• A whole host of other technical questions

And then the work begins — time for code, code, code.

Quality Assurance

The final stage in the development process is Quality Assurance (QA). At the highest level, it involves testing that the new feature does what it’s intended to do. In reality, it also involves ensuring the language is clear and understandable, the appearance is consistent, and all necessary guidance documents are in place before it goes live — as well as checking that other areas of the system aren’t being affected unexpectedly.

Releasing into the Wild

Once the new feature is written, tested, and documented, it’s time to release it to our users. And this is my favourite part.

We get to write articles and social posts about it, and I get to talk to customers and prospects about it, showing off all the hard work of the team. In cases where specific people have expressed interest in a feature, I get to let them know it’s ready to use in their system. Some of these features really will make a huge difference to their business processes, so it really is the fun bit.

So if you’ve got any ideas, I’d love to hear them. Or if you’d like to dive straight into an OpenCRM system and take a look around, get in touch for a free trial.