How to handle Feature Requests

[Mark Levison]

Its wonderful that people discuss their needs and desires for features on this list, however this discussion doesn't give Andrey and his team a good sense of the priorities. After all it costs nothing to say "+1" to every request that goes by. As a result we've established mlo @ uservoice as a forum to go and vote for features.

FYI the current leader board is: IPad app 79 votes; Calendar overview 74 and Auto-syncing 54.

Uservoice is a simple system that allows you to add feature requests and vote for features that you want. Its better than the forum because you're limited to 10 votes forcing you to make wise decisions about what you really want. Example: 

• Calendar overview -I've given  3 votes, because I think its insanely important. I also realize it will take a long to implement and so I won't get my votes back for a while
• Auto-Sync - I've also given 3 votes, because I think its important and will likely be completed sooner so I will get my votes back and reuse them.

Cheers
Mark Levison

Mark Levison | Agile Pain Relief Consulting | Certified Scrum Trainer
Agile Editor @ InfoQ | Blog | Twitter | Office: (613) 862-2538
Recent Entries: Story Slicing How Small is Small Enough, Why use an Agile Coach

[Joshua]

This is really good... Will there be one for the iPhone app as well?

On Jan 6, 4:21 pm, Mark Levison <m...@mlevison.com> wrote:
> Its wonderful that people discuss their needs and desires for features on
> this list, however this discussion doesn't give Andrey and his team a good
> sense of the priorities. After all it costs nothing to say "+1" to every
> request that goes by. As a result we've established mlo @

> uservoice<http://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general> as

> a forum to go and vote for features.
>
> FYI the current leader board is: IPad app 79 votes; Calendar overview 74 and
> Auto-syncing 54.
>
> Uservoice is a simple system that allows you to add feature requests and
> vote for features that you want. Its better than the forum because you're
> limited to 10 votes forcing you to make wise decisions about what you really
> want. Example:
>

>    - Calendar overview -I've given  3 votes, because I think its insanely

>    important. I also realize it will take a long to implement and so I won't
>    get my votes back for a while

>    - Auto-Sync - I've also given 3 votes, because I think its important and

>    will likely be completed sooner so I will get my votes back and reuse them.
>
> Cheers
> Mark Levison
>

> [image: Mark] <http://www.flickr.com/photos/36331075@N00/3833840021/>*Mark
> Levison* | Agile Pain Relief Consulting <http://agilepainrelief.com/> |
> Certified Scrum Trainer
> Agile Editor @ InfoQ <http://www.infoq.com/about.jsp> |
> Blog<http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/>|
> Twitter <http://twitter.com/mlevison> | Office:(613) 862-2538

> Recent Entries: Story Slicing How Small is Small

> Enough<http://agilepainrelief.com/notesfromatooluser/2010/09/story-slicing-h...>,
> Why use an Agile
> Coach<http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/2009/11/why-use-an-agile-coach.html>

[Mark Levison]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 9:56 PM, Joshua <joshua...@gmail.com> wrote:

This is really good... Will there be one for the iPhone app as well?

Thanks I really like it too. We don't yet have a separate Uservoice section for IPhone/Crackberry/.... because Uservoice charges a fair amount for its first step above free ($19/mth). Until it really proves it worth its alot to expect Andrey to shell out. In addition since I do this for free (well for the love and adulation you all provide :-), I'm not sure I have the time and energy to put into maintaining many forums (I'm a moderator here and for the IPhone forums in my spare time).

Cheers
Mark Levison

Mark Levison | Agile Pain Relief Consulting | Certified Scrum Trainer
Agile Editor @ InfoQ | Blog | Twitter | Office: (613) 862-2538
Recent Entries: Story Slicing How Small is Small Enough, Why use an Agile Coach

 

[m...@grantsmiths.org]

Mark, Uservoice does appear to be an important step forward by giving a clear picture of the priorities of a proposed enhancement. However, the picture is flawed because it only shows how much support a proposal has, without showing at all how much opposition it has. I wish that I could use one of my votes to vote against a proposal I find unwise. I understand that the rules of Uservoice are beyond your control, but if you think of a way of making opposition tangible, it would be helpful.

-Dwight

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[Mark Levison]

On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 12:54 PM, <m...@grantsmiths.org> wrote:

Mark, Uservoice does appear to be an important step forward by giving a clear picture of the priorities of a proposed enhancement. However, the picture is flawed because it only shows how much support a proposal has, without showing at all how much opposition it has. I wish that I could use one of my votes to vote against a proposal I find unwise. I understand that the rules of Uservoice are beyond your control, but if you think of a way of making opposition tangible, it would be helpful.

Dwight - if nothing else you could always just make a note in the comments that you don't like the idea. Its tempting to write a more sophisticated uservoice knockoff myself, but I think I will stay focused on my Coaching/Consulting business :-0

[Lisa Stroyan]

If you object to proposal X couldn't you just create a feature of "not X" and vote for that?  That way people would be limited in their objections and they would carry a lot of weight.

Lisa from mobile

[yurkennis]

Is it official from now on? If so, updating "How to request new MLO
features" sticked post on top of this group will be extremely helpful.
(and also maybe it's time to review other sticked posts, like " What
are the top five features you want to add to MLO?" or "MyLifeOrganized
products roadmap" ?)

--
yurkennis

On Jan 7, 12:21 am, Mark Levison <m...@mlevison.com> wrote:
> Its wonderful that people discuss their needs and desires for features on
> this list, however this discussion doesn't give Andrey and his team a good
> sense of the priorities. After all it costs nothing to say "+1" to every
> request that goes by. As a result we've established mlo @

> uservoice<http://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general> as

> a forum to go and vote for features.
>
> FYI the current leader board is: IPad app 79 votes; Calendar overview 74 and
> Auto-syncing 54.
>
> Uservoice is a simple system that allows you to add feature requests and
> vote for features that you want. Its better than the forum because you're
> limited to 10 votes forcing you to make wise decisions about what you really
> want. Example:
>

>    - Calendar overview -I've given  3 votes, because I think its insanely

>    important. I also realize it will take a long to implement and so I won't
>    get my votes back for a while

>    - Auto-Sync - I've also given 3 votes, because I think its important and

>    will likely be completed sooner so I will get my votes back and reuse them.
>
> Cheers
> Mark Levison
>

> [image: Mark] <http://www.flickr.com/photos/36331075@N00/3833840021/>*Mark
> Levison* | Agile Pain Relief Consulting <http://agilepainrelief.com/> |

> Certified Scrum Trainer

> Agile Editor @ InfoQ <http://www.infoq.com/about.jsp> |
> Blog<http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/>|

> Twitter <http://twitter.com/mlevison> | Office: (613) 862-2538

> Recent Entries: Story Slicing How Small is Small

> Enough<http://agilepainrelief.com/notesfromatooluser/2010/09/story-slicing-h...>,
> Why use an Agile
> Coach<http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/2009/11/why-use-an-agile-coach.html>

[pottster]

You raise an interesting point Dwight. Firstly though, all credit to Mark for setting up the MLO uservoice facility as an interim. Andrey said in the product roadmap that he will be looking at a longer term solution for feature suggestions which may or may not be uservoice. I tend to agree with you that the facility to vote against something is useful (if not abused). Other user voting services like userecho already have this. The advantage, I think is threefold.

Firstly, it helps to avoid feature bloat if a significant number of people do not want a feature.

Secondly, if a majority are indifferent to a feature and don't rate it highly enough to vote for it then they should still have the opportunity to lower it's priority i.e. vote against it. If this happened, features that are most important to most people would be developed first. The economists call this "opportunity cost". In this case, with limited resource, the true cost of developing a new feature is what doesn't get developed in it's place.

Thirdly, a strong against vote might sway the developer into making a feature optional where possible to keep everybody happy.

[drknight]

Yes, yes. There needs to be a veto votes. Traditionally this come from
dot voting, where people in a room are given 10 green dots and 10 red
dots. People would put green dots on topics/ideas they supported and
red dots on items they opposed. Without the red dots, you only get
half the picture. What if an idea has 47 green votes but 289 red
votes. You wouldn't do it. Right now all we get is the green dots
making it sound like the idea is a compelling, good, and valid one.

On Jan 7, 11:54 am, <m...@grantsmiths.org> wrote:
> Mark, Uservoice does appear to be an important step forward by giving a
> clear picture of the priorities of a proposed enhancement. However, the
> picture is flawed because it only shows how much support a proposal has,
> without showing at all how much opposition it has. I wish that I could use
> one of my votes to vote against a proposal I find unwise. I understand that
> the rules of Uservoice are beyond your control, but if you think of a way of
> making opposition tangible, it would be helpful.
>
> -Dwight
>
> From: mylifeo...@googlegroups.com
> [mailto:mylifeo...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mark Levison
> Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2011 4:21 PM
> To: Mylifeorganized
> Subject: [MLO] How to handle Feature Requests
>
> Its wonderful that people discuss their needs and desires for features on
> this list, however this discussion doesn't give Andrey and his team a good
> sense of the priorities. After all it costs nothing to say "+1" to every
> request that goes by. As a result we've established mlo @ uservoice

> <http://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general>  as a forum to go and vote

> for features.
>
> FYI the current leader board is: IPad app 79 votes; Calendar overview 74 and
> Auto-syncing 54.
>
> Uservoice is a simple system that allows you to add feature requests and
> vote for features that you want. Its better than the forum because you're
> limited to 10 votes forcing you to make wise decisions about what you really
> want. Example:
>

> *       Calendar overview -I've given  3 votes, because I think its insanely

> important. I also realize it will take a long to implement and so I won't
> get my votes back for a while

> *       Auto-Sync - I've also given 3 votes, because I think its important

> and will likely be completed sooner so I will get my votes back and reuse
> them.
>
> Cheers
> Mark Levison
>

>  <http://www.flickr.com/photos/36331075@N00/3833840021/>
> <http://www.flickr.com/photos/36331075@N00/3833840021/> Mark
> <http://www.flickr.com/photos/36331075@N00/3833840021/> Mark Levison |
> <http://agilepainrelief.com/> Agile Pain Relief Consulting | Certified Scrum
> Trainer
>  <http://www.infoq.com/about.jsp> Agile Editor @ InfoQ |
> <http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/> Blog |  <http://twitter.com/mlevison>

> Twitter | Office: (613) 862-2538
> Recent Entries:

> <http://agilepainrelief.com/notesfromatooluser/2010/09/story-slicing-h...
> ll-is-enough.html> Story Slicing How Small is Small Enough,
> <http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/2009/11/why-use-an-agile-coach.html> Why

[Dwight]

So, what I have done is to create a feature request called "*not* calendar view" and used one of my votes to support it. The issue is that the simple request "calendar view" means many different things to many different people. Consequently, there's a serious risk that building a solution will have a high cost while leaving many users dissatisfied.

If you know the stories of Br'er Rabbit you will remember the Tar Baby. Once you touch it, you are stuck. The more you struggle the more stuck you get
-Dwight
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

[Gogol Module]

Calendar overview +1 too
Cheers
NG
 

[Joel Azaria]

Not to be a wet blanket and many thanks to those who work to keep the community going but I have to add my 2c here:

Uservoice is an extremely flawed model to use for feature suggestions.  Drknight's post illustrates this well:


On Friday, January 7, 2011 6:27:43 PM UTC-5, drknight wrote:

...   Traditionally this come from

dot voting, where people in a room are given 10 green dots and 10 red
dots. People would put green dots on topics/ideas they supported and
red dots on items they opposed. Without the red dots, you only get
half the picture. What if an idea has 47 green votes but 289 red
votes. You wouldn't do it. Right now all we get is the green dots
making it sound like the idea is a compelling, good, and valid one.

The concept of giving out 10 green dots and 10 red dots begets there being a limited scope/number of issues to vote with them on.  As the sheer number of Uservoice requests continues to grow, each persons 10 votes becomes more and more diluted in reference to the size of the request pool.
This is compounded by what I call 'amorphous blob' requests that are too broad to be considered just a 'feature' request and so too easily vacuum up votes that might be better spent to flesh out actual 'feature' requests that now may go unnoticed.

A simple (generic) example would be if i wanted an enhancement to the way a view is handled for instance, this might be a good idea that impacts a fair little percentage and so could garner some user votes if it's seen and explained well so that others understand the request.
However if it's competing for attention against a blob request like "we want an iPhone app" it's going to get lost.  Clearly just about EVERY mlo user with an IOS device will HAVE TO vote for the ios app.  And so 3 votes are 'stolen' from bringing attention elsewhere.

Why is the iPhone app a blob you ask?  Because it's not a single *feature*, it's a whole host of 'features' (actually HUGE TON of features..) 
True, many ppl will want it, just likely not all for the same reasons ('features'?) which is why this one 'request' alone could (would) support an entire uservoice forum all it's own. 
I understand the need for people to express there want of such things but to shoehorn them into the same forum where I'm supposed to request my little View enhancement greatly tilts the scale to my request getting buried under the mountains of a few amorphous blobs.


For uservoice to be effective imo, it must have a limited number of issues to be voted on.  In other words a fairly well curated and condensed list of features for users to vote on.
Which is not what the MLO UV is now and not even something the UV format encourages which is why I called it flawed. 
It's absolutely a big reason why I (and I would guess others) simply don't bother with it.


yes it's easy to tack on +1 to a passing post.  If you're following along (the devs teams that is) you could engage that poster easily enough by asking a question.  That helps flesh out the request and also helps gauge poster's 'commitment' to that request.  Not perfect, but better than the UV option imho.

The bugs/requests themeselves should be stored/prioritized/etc. in a private bug tracking (e.g. a ticket system, Kanban board (eg. Trello) or something similar) for internal usage and tracking through dev and QC to release.
 

[Dwight]

Sorry about the premature emissions, I’m going back to Outlook to finish this.

 

On Aug 15, 2013, Dwight <m...@grantsmiths.org> wrote:

On Aug 12, 2013, Joel Azaria <jaz...@gmail.com> wrote:
÷The bugs/requests themeselves should

÷be stored/prioritized/etc. in a private
÷bug tracking (e.g. a ticket system,
÷Kanban board (eg. Trello) or something
÷similar) for internal usage and tracking
÷through dev and QC to release

Joel, I'm happy to inform you that the devs are using JIRA for this purpose, internally with the private beta testing team.

÷Without the red dots, you only get
÷half the picture.

I agree with you. UserVoice was selected and set up by a user. When I complained at the time that I could not vote against a popular proposal that I opposed, he challenged me to find something that (a) was free, (b) forced users to prioritize by limiting the number of votes, (c) supported votes against a proposal. I couldn’t find anything appropriate. Maybe there’s something now, but that would raise the question of whether the benefit would warrant the disruption of moving.

÷For uservoice to be effective imo, it must

÷have a limited number of issues to be voted
÷on.  In other words a fairly well curated
÷and condensed list of features for users to
÷vote on.

That’s a pretty interesting suggestion and it’s clear that there would be significant benefits. I have two concerns: (1) I know that if I were the curator, suggestions relating to the features I personally rely on (eg Nearby) would have a better chance of making the cut into the curated list than those I don’t use (eg Reminders). I suspect the same would be true of any individual curator. (2) I don’t know who would actually have the time to do the curation and do it well.

-Dwight
MLO Betazoid & Moderator
Via k@mail on sgn2

 

[DanD]

It's great to see a mechanism to prioritize user requests.

That said, Uservoice is a terrible choice (as shown by hundreds of user complaints here or here or here), because the same limited number of votes for all users has two major flaws: 

1. It assumes all users are equally good at coming up with good ideas. Imagine Thomas Edison or Steve Jobs had to use Uservoice. They would have no more influence than Average Joe. 

2.The point of having only X votes is allegedly to encourage users to vote only on the most important features to them. What tends to happen in reality though, is that users vote on the FIRST features they realize they need, or the FIRST ones they see on the UserVoice website. After that, they run out of votes. Extremely few users will go back to remove their votes from a feature they voted for first, and instead vote for a more important feature.

What the MLO team can do (if they want to keep using UserVoice), is to increase the number of votes to, for example, 100.

[DanD]

On Thursday, August 15, 2013 4:49:00 AM UTC-7, Dwight Arthur wrote:

I agree with you. UserVoice was selected and set up by a user. When I complained at the time that I could not vote against a popular proposal that I opposed, he challenged me to find something that (a) was free, (b) forced users to prioritize by limiting the number of votes, (c) supported votes against a proposal. I couldn’t find anything appropriate. Maybe there’s something now, but that would raise the question of whether the benefit would warrant the disruption of moving.

IdeaScale has been around since 2009, at least. I used it for an open-source project I worked on - http://mojomojo.ideascale.com

Ideascale is free, has agree/disagree etc. Even if it weren't free, I'm sure the MLO team would be happy to pay some money in order to properly gauge user feedback.

[Stéph]

Agreed; Uservoice just doesn't work, because new ideas languish at the bottom of the list where nobody sees them.

I think the combination of the Google forums and the JIRA beta test issue tracking site works much better and gets Andrey's attention. So all you've got to do is persuade the beta testers to champion your idea.

Stéph

[Stéph]

[Stéph]

[Dwight]

In my opinion,
JIRA with supportive discussions in the forums, works well for new ideas
that have the passionate support of a group of users. It doesn't have to be
a big group, but they have to be able to explain what they want, why they
want it, why it will be good for lots of MLO users and maybe drive new
sales, how it can be done, and what the negative issues are and how to
mitigate them. Example: locked tabs in MLO 4.0 which never would have gotten
enough momentum in UserVoice to get noticed.

UserVoice is great for long-running issues that have the support of a large
number of users. It's effective at showing breadth of support. It's not
necessary for them to be able to articulate precisely what they want or how
to do it. Example: calendar view. Numerous people have put forward proposals
for calendar view. Each one tends to be a partial solution that leaves some
calendar-view fans unsatisfied and creates new possibly serious problems for
other users. This would in my view prevent it from moving forward in JIRA.
But UserVoice clearly shows that this is an issue to a large number of users
and they aren't going away, so Andrey has committed to do something in this
space. This is the example where UserVoice gets a result that JIRA in my
view cannot.
-Dwight

-----Original Message-----
From: mylifeo...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:mylifeo...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Stéph
Sent: Monday, September 09, 2013 4:43 PM
To: mylifeo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [MLO] Re: How to handle Feature Requests

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