Phew!
That was one huge release.
If you didn’t catch this news then I am referring to Method Grid version 06 which took the (awesome) technical team the best part of four months to design, code, test and deploy. The key feature it introduced was a prerequisite for our professional clients – the ability to configure access control across the platform. You can read all about the benefits of this new feature set here > Configurable Access Control.
With the short pause-for-breath that this release afforded, we asked our user community to let us know what they want to see next with respect to future, functional enhancements to the solution.
This blog aims to reveal the results of that survey (a huge thanks to everyone who took the effort to complete) and how it has influenced our next phase development roadmap.
What macro “use case” do you most want future developments to address?
The first question we asked concerned the macro “use case” that you would most want the solution to focus on with respect to future developments. These were scored on the following system:
- Not sure/Don’t understand
- This would put me off the solution
- Not interested
- Interested
- Very relevant/beneficial
Across all the survey results, this resulted in the following ranked order:
What to make of this?
Well, no huge surprises. It matched what we are talking about with many of our customers – and what we are seeing in practice. There is also a relatively tight banding in the scoring i.e. all of these “use case” areas are of interest to many. It does, however, reinforce the potential to further introduce aspects of project/process based assurance i.e. to support users who harness “master” grids into specific “instances” of actual delivery. There is real potential to take this (existing) functionality to another level, say, with the introduction of resource and scheduling assignment, pending activity notification, enhanced management reporting etc.
Fundamentally, what this survey revealed is what we are seeing in practice. Once a company/team invests in building structured/codified content (initially as the common, central reference point for “best practice”) it then is a short, logical step to using such master grids for actual, live delivery assurance. Cloned grids – somewhat uniquely – then work as both (a) a rich knowledge resource for practitioners – AND – (b) a work/task productivity and management reporting solution. So, building out this feature set further – whilst retaining the solution’s inherent simplicity – makes a lot of sense.
What new features do you most seek?
The survey also asked what specific features you would most value next – as beneficial to these “use case” scenarios. Suggestions were scored to the following legend:
- Don’t really understand
- Not interested
- Low priority
- Please prioritise
- Need this now!
Against this scoring schema the ranked features (most popular first) were as follows: