Drawing from all the sources noted in the previous post, Product Management has the task of identifying a list of potential projects that we believe will provide Users with the best experience while also appealing to the marketplace for new sales. Each item must also be estimated for the scope of its impact on our staff for coding, testing and documentation.
The Backlog represents the nexus of resource availability and functional significance. Though that sounds somewhat cold and calculated, we put a tremendous amount of thought into the impact of our choices on the greatest number of Users. One of the ways we do that is by identifying development themes for the core Host projects. In gathering a group of related enhancements, we increase the effect by making multiple improvements within a functional area of the system.
Additionally, we want to include a variety of improvements across the product as we do our best to offer something for every User and we also like to include several surprises that we think will have a significant impact on both current and future customers.
Of course, the list is always far more extensive than can be tackled in a single release, which leads to prioritization. Traditionally, prioritization is viewed as one of the dark arts practiced by Product Management. There are so many factors involved it would require a project just to list them but I can say that key considerations include the number of properties that will be positively impacted and the necessary sequencing of related projects.
External factors, too, can affect the choices we make, the COVID-19 pandemic being a perfect example of a circumstance beyond our control but one to which we have had to pivot and respond.
In the end, the most important influence can be attributed to the members of our SMS family – our partner properties and Users. Listening to you is the best way we know to provide the solutions you need.
Written by Rick Downing, Senior Product Manager, SMS|Host
Posted 9/21/2021
