Development of Grand Avenue Software is 100% customer driven. No matter which modules they license or how many employees they have, every Grand Avenue customer has equal input into our release planning process. When customers inquire about capabilities that are not included in the software, we record either new feature requests or additional customer interest in existing feature requests. New feature requests are reviewed and assigned a risk-based priority in a weekly planning meeting. New requests usually start at a low priority and are increased Feature requests increase one position in priority each time a different customer requests the same feature. Stories that address compliance risks start at higher priorities, depending on the level of risk. The most-requested features move to the top of the priority list to become release candidates, which is the pool of feature requests that we draw from when we do release planning.
Here are the different scheduling/priority categories for feature requests, from highest priority to lowest:
Release 1 - features planned for the release currently in development
Release 2 - features planned for the release tentatively scheduled 3-4 months after Release 1
Release 3 - features planned for the release tentatively scheduled for 3-4 months after Release 2
Release Candidate - features that haven't been scheduled for a specific release yet, but may be considered when planning future releases
Group A-D - features that require more customer interest before they can be considered when Grand Avenue does release planning. As more customers indicate an interest in a feature, it moves up from the lowest priority, Group D, to Group C, Group B, Group A, and then, finally, into the Release Candidate category.
Future - features that have been requested by only a single customer and do not directly address a risk in the system
The most-requested features move to the top of the list to become release candidates, which is the pool of feature requests that we draw from when we do release planning. Below is a graphical representation of the process.
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