6 Best Practices to Manage Your Product Feature Requests
An idea for a feature is a suggestion that a client sends to help you understand the product. As we all know that his expectation from your product is important for better user experience.
Feature request is a crucial way to communicate between you as the product’s owner as well as your users. They give you a live image of how the end-users are using your product. This guide will assist you to improve or alter changes in the product to provide more value to users.
The management of your feature requests more effectively can help you:
- Keep track of ideas for products,
- Prioritize the features of your product
- Make your users more comfortable and, as a consequence,
- Keep and expand your customer base.
This article will provide the information you should know in order to gather features requests from your customers, prioritize those requests and use these requests to create successful products with software for managing your product. Apart from this, use of a Project Management Software can hep you effectively manage your project.
What kinds of feature requests exist?
Users are able to provide various types of feedback based on application and the issue they’re facing.
These types of feature request comprise:
1. Bug reports.
Have you ever had a piece of equipment malfunction or behave badly when you were playing around with it?
Perhaps you were using some device, such as one of the Android tablet and the application fails to function. You then receive a message telling you, “your application has crashed. Submit bug report?”.
That’s it.
Bug reports are customer’s feedback whenever they’re using the software and something malfunctions, fails provide the features they’d like it to provide.
2. Product improvement requests
Most of the time, your users are very happy with the product you’ve created, however, they believe that the product could be better.
Make improvement in the Product Seamlessly.
Requests for improvement to your product are basically bits of feedback from users that tell you what is working in your product, and most importantly, how to improve it.
3. New feature requests for products
Sometimes, your customers do not just want more features. They want completely new features which will help them gain greater value from your product. They submit enhancement requests that require completely new features that are built within your products.
How do you prioritize and effectively manage feature requests
Management of products is more of an art than science. It requires a flexible approach that you can implement repeatedly to help you to better prioritize your requests for features. handle them, and ultimately create more appealing products that please users.
Six best practices you can use to ensure managing your product features to the highest level possible
1. All things must be in one spot
One of the biggest issues teams in the field is product feedback scattered across the entire organization.
Live chat, email, Facebook, Twitter, as well as a list of sites where users can submit feature requests to.
This causes a major issue for teams working on product development manually bringing all the scattered feedback in one location and trying to understand it.
When you don’t have a complete view of what your product’s users want to see What can you do to prioritize their needs and incorporate these into your product?
Simple solution: put all your product features requests in one spot, like an tool for managing projects which allows you to visualise, prioritize and monitor the progress of your requests as they progress from being a task to being completed.
2. Establish a system for receiving and managing requests
If you’re anything like me, then you aren’t the type to make feature requests frequently. In reality, I only make requests for features on products I regularly use or on products that are extremely significant to me.
So, if you’re expecting me to log into Gmail and write 200 words to inform you that a service (that I use at least once per week) is broken, then you’re making fun of me. The reward/effort ratio is excessive, in my view.
Your product’s users will likely have comments from time to time they’d like to provide to you, but it’s going to be difficult to get them to give it in the absence of an automated system that you’ve created to make it easier for them.
The project management program eliminates this hurdle in the management of feature requests process.
Utilizing an open request management tool such as Feedsocio gives users an easy way to give feedback using an easy-to-use interface. On the backend, this powerful project management tool gathers and organizes the information into a single location, which your product management team can track the information, prioritize it, and then update it when they are working on it.
3. Keep your customers engaged
The process of improvement for your product isn’t finished when you’ve received features requests from customers and are incorporating the product around them. The customers must know that regardless of what they want you’re taking the necessary steps to creating them before launching the feature as quickly as you can with templates for managing projects.
This is a way to increase trust among users by convincing users that you’re constantly developing your product to be beneficial to them. There are a variety of ways to keep your users interested in the progress of your product including:
- Email updates,
- Publishing mockups and ideas for design,
- using feedback from customers at various stages of the development process, and in general,
- ensuring that the platform is open and users are informed about the progress of their products.
Engaging your users lets them know that they remain a part of your product experience and helps keep them connected until they’re satisfied with the products they’ve asked for are available to be delivered.
4. Prioritize and classify Prioritize and classify
Product feature requests comprise numerous thoughts, ideas and goals from users who use your product in a variety of ways.
Therefore, even though the feedback your users give you may be drastically different, you’ll be able to identify common ground that points to certain areas that your solution.
How do you interpret all this information so that you can track what’s needed to be built or upgraded? Sort them.
Software for tracking projects allows you to categorize requests so that you can keep track of what categories features are placed and will give you a better understanding about your products. This software will provide you with a list of places you could modify your product, and what features you should prioritize for the best results.
5. Discuss issues with your team and other stakeholders who are relevant.
Before beginning a development initiative to create an feature that is that is requested by customers You must gather the other stakeholders in the project is to decide the most efficient method of action. You should ask a variety of introspective questions on every feature request, including:
- Are we able to provide the necessary resources to expand this feature?
- Why haven’t we rolled out this feature up to today? Be prepared of every challenges that might occur during any action?
- Are we in the midst of a pressing requirement at the moment? Are there other features you’ve requested we could create that will provide the most benefits overall?
- What is the significance of this feature to the end-users? Is it just a desire or a vital requirement, a must-have, a deal-breaker?
Before you choose to develop any feature, know the team and their stories.
6. Create a roadmap for the product that is public to track product development efforts
An user-facing program for making a roadmap of your product assists your customers to know that features they’ve requested are being considered and will be ready within a time-frame.
In particular, it can help to collect feedback from users throughout the process so that your customers can let you know whether the product is being developed in the way they would like it to and what changes could be made before the features are launched.
In what way Feedsocio Project can be helpful in managing feature requests for products
The management of feature requests is essential to the whole product management procedure.
It provides easy methods for customers to feel important. Create are the ones your customers actually want. This allows you to be more flexible with the development of your product.
A key point to remember is that, in a sense managing features in a product is basically product managementwhich is flexible project management specifically. You gather thoughts (feature requests) to note them down on a map prioritizing the features ( sprint planning) and then tackle these ( sprint retrospective) then, when you’re finished, you test ( sprint review) prior to launching them to the end-users.
Therefore, it is obvious to handle your feature requests the best way if you approach it with to project management.
In reality handling your request for feature with a powerful project management software like Feedsocio will help you to:
- Put all your feature requests to one place,
- Manage and collect feature requests using a simple interface.
- Get customers involved while your develop new features, and,
- Create a roadmap that is public so that your customers can keep the track of your performance.
Feedsocio offers an easy method to gather feature requests. You can easily prioritize, monitor, and make sure that users are involved until they’re implemented.