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. Requests increase one position in priority each time a different customer asks for the same feature. 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

Below is a graphical representation of the process.

note

Grand Avenue uses an agile software development methodology, one aspect of which is the ability to adapt quickly to new requirements. Therefore, features scheduled for upcoming releases are subject to change at any time based on current customer priorities.