To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also carefully plan ahead – after all, a goal without a solid plan is nothing more than just a wish. At Talkspirit, we believe that building a remarkable product doesn’t happen over night; it is a continuous process that requires hard work, dedication and most of all, a rock-solid plan. Today, we’ve decided to give you a little sneak-peak of our very own plan – or how we tend call it, our very own ‘roadmap’.
What is in the roadmap?
Our ‘roadmap to greatness’ actually involves every single stakeholder in relation to the talkSpirit platform – more specifically, it involves two parties in particular. Believe it or not, but the first party is actually you, our dear customers. Many of you are consistently providing us with essential feedback, reporting bugs, and from time-to-time, even suggesting potential ideas. The other party however is us, the entire talkSpirit squad, from marketing all the way to the technical department and beyond.
In other words, our roadmap is brew put together of all the ideas of every single stakeholder involved. Let’s see this in further detail shall we?
Product vision
This is our main feed of ideas, an ever-lasting stream of ideas that originates from our product vision – what we are planning to achieve in the upcoming months and even years. The product vision allows us to brighten-up our current product; solving problems we believe are worth solving and strengthen its market position.
Customers feedbacks
Upon reaching the second part of the roadmap, customer feedback strolls along. In the short-term, our customers provide us with numerous suggestions with regards to wishes, desires and sometimes irritation factors. In combination with the latest trends and developments, we always try our very best to constantly improve and develop the product, by fixing or/and introducing new features.
Bugs and problems
In addition to customer feedback, there is logically also the reporting process of various bugs and problems in the system. All of these issues are immediately reported to be fixed as soon as possible.
Technical enhancements
Last but not least, our very own technical geniuses are constantly fighting an almost endless battle to keep improving the platform. As the number of users is increasing by the day, the product uses external services and frameworks – in modern English: this requires ‘updates’, and a lot of them. Re-adjusting, updating and checking the servers regularly however, contributes to the best possible user experience.
Prioritization
Programming 101: all of these ideas – bugs, enhancements, adjustments, wishes, etc. – go into a so-called ‘backlog’. The backlog lists all the ideas next to each other in an organized manner, so that we exactly know what specifically is going on. Perhaps the most important task of all, is to carefully analyze all the ideas at hand – such as deciding whether or not these are in line with our product vision, for example.
Additionally, all ideas are assessed in terms of available resources, potential risk and overall possibility, whilst grouping similar ideas together. This is a rather challenging process which involves difficult decisions taking on whether or not an idea is worth solving. Luckily, these decisions are not to be taken by one person alone, as every team member has a say in the importance of each idea – by means of a vote.
Once the final selection is complete, the ideas will be divided into 3 categories:
- Bugs related to existing features
- Small improvements related to existing features
- Big improvements and new features
Once all ideas are established and categorized, it is simply a matter of updating our roadmap – thus slowly moving forward to the ‘perfect product’. The process of analysing, selection and prioritization is done continuously, as we believe there is always room for improvement.
We need you!
As you can see, your ideas are part of a much bigger process but nonetheless, extremely essential to us. All your feedback, ideas, suggestions, wishes and desires are always logged into our backlog where they will be analysed – whatever happens. If the same request occurs multiple times, is voted for, and aligns with our vision, it will come to life very quickly!
This is one of the reasons why we have created a customer feedback forum, where you can post your ideas whilst voting and commenting on ideas of others at the same time.
Help us to make the product better and better!
Jean
