One thing everyone should know is that there is absolutely no shortage of development projects competing for our attention. After 37 years, hundreds of interfaces, thousands of requests and millions of lines of code, the volume of demand for enhancements and new interfaces would lead you to believe that SMS|Host is a slacker. Despite possessing the richest set of core functionality of any PMS on the market, we must continually adapt to the needs of an evolving market and an increasingly sophisticated industry.
Over the past decade, we have opened new avenues for you to reach out to us and you have not hesitated. Our Request for Development (RFD) process yields, on average, three to five requests a week. The Collaboration feature within the Customer Community is a constant source of suggestions while some of you contact us directly, as you have for years. Sales demos generate questions about functionality from our competitive set. With each new feature we release, we receive feedback from you on ways to improve the experience, while new installations are a frequent source of changing legal requirements that must be met.
And then there is the world of Integrations. Hardly a day goes by that SMS is not contacted by one or more vendors looking to interface with our products while many Users reach out to us, as well, on behalf of vendors whose offerings promise to improve your operations.
Finally, we are hardly devoid of our own ideas for improving SMS|Host. The most rewarding part of Product Management is often the opportunity to lead by design rather than just responding. With so many bright shiny objects competing for our attention, it can seem overwhelming at times. But, in the end, choices are carefully made and the next vision for the product takes shape.
All of these ideas and suggestions are reviewed and the most promising ones are added into our Development Backlog. This is the list projects in queue for Product Development to schedule with their resources. In the next post, we’ll see how the contents of the Backlog are determined.
Written by Rick Downing, Senior Product Manager, SMS|Host
Posted 9/14/2021
