| Expandable is revising the manner in which it processes product enhancement requests submitted by customers. What used to be called Program Change Requests (PCRs) are now called Customer Enhancement Requests (CERs) and to better track customer requests Expandable has implemented a new issue tracking system called JIRA. |
| The JIRA system helps manage CERs through the process. A new classification scheme will be used to pre-sort enhancement requests into five categories ranging from C1 to C5. Requests assigned the ranking of C1 are defined as the higher customer priority enhancements valued by multiple customers. Enhancement requests assigned to the C5 category are the lowest priority and likely to be a single request not being considered for implementation but tracked for other interest. The mid-priority categories (C2-C4) allow for variation between the two extremes. |
Expandable’s management team is actively evaluating requests along with the product strategy and fitting CERs into the product road map as they line up with Expandable’s overall product strategy.
At current, further experimentation is underway to make the best use of the JIRA system in automating responses and streamlining the process by which customers are informed about the status if their requests.
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| The Customer Enhancement Request Form |
| The request form on the Customer Resource Center has been modified to facilitate the new process and additional elements have been added to gather information that will help management evaluate and rank CERs or directly consider them for the product road map if in alignment with Expandable’s product strategy. |
Once a CER is entered through the form on the Customer Resource Center, the request is screened by Expandable Customer Support to identify any product use issues or address requests that have already been integrated into the product. If the request represents new capabilities, the request is entered in to the new JIRA issue tracking system for the next step which is management review. Management review determines if the request is an individual customization or functionality to be considered in the general feature set of the product and how it lines up with Expandable’s product strategy. Where requests align with product strategy they will be considered for the product road map; otherwise they are assigned one of the new categories and kept in the system to be reviewed periodically as product strategy and tactics evolve over time. |
| Closing the Loop |
While the management review process has been in place for some time, customer visibility of the status of enhancement requests has been an issue. One of the goals of the new process and Expandable’s investment in the JIRA system is better communication with customers who have placed requests into the process. Expandable is exploring features available in the JIRA tracking system to automatically notify the requestor with updates as requests work their way through the process. The effort is under investigation for future enhancements to the process with the goal of better closing the loop with customers. |
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