How feedback from customers get into the product – the evolution of CrossTag for XBRL tagging
What is Agile development (using a Wikipedia reference):
Agile software development is a group of software development methodologies that are based on similar principles. Agile methodologies generally promote a project management process that encourages frequent-
Stop – Stop – Stop
As a customer, you could care less how Rivet Software develops software.
What you do care about (in addition to quality), is how exactly does a product feature get into the product? If you suggest a usability idea or a product enhancement, you want to know when you might expect this feature to get incorporated into the product (assuming that the idea will benefit all customers). If you hope to see this feature be incorporated into the product within 3 to 12 months, then you really do care that Rivet uses agile development.
At Rivet, we use agile development and it has been fun to see the CrossTag product morph in the last 6 to 8 months. We are working on our 3rd release of the product in the last 8 months. The user interface for the CrossTag product has improved thanks to some great feedback from the customers during beta and after the product was released. Not all features get in. Sometimes even some really good ideas are not implemented immediately because of the cost to get these features into the product.
However, I would like to share with you some screen shots that show the morphing of CrossTag in the last 8 months. I will take you through CrossTag version 1 which was released to beta in June to CrossTag 1.5 which was released in September 2008 to the CrossTag Spring Release which will go beta near the end of this month.
Our initial release of CrossTag was June of 2008. The user interface looked like the following:
Some customer feedback we had included:
A) The ribbon is not very useful to me.
B) Search information in the taxonomy viewer was confusing.
C) These options seem like they should be in the ribbon.
D) Using the control properties to add or modify labels, confuses and scares me. The product looks too geeky to me.
E) I have no visual cues to indicate which elements were used in my template.
F) We need more room to do our tagging, the screen is just way too crowded.
G) Re-arrange tabs is in a very odd place.
Based upon this feedback, we quickly shifted gears and produced a product that addressed many of these issues but not all of them.
CrossTag 1.5 was released in September of 2008. The user interface looked like the following:
This was an improvement over the initial release:
A) We moved the reports to the ribbon which gave you slightly more room to view elements.
B) We moved preparer permissions to the ribbon, which gave you slightly more room to tag.
C) We eliminated the need for the control properties and allowed in-line editing of the labels.
D) We added-in use stars so you could see the elements used in the template.
CrossTag Spring Release is due to be released in the spring of 2009, hence the product name. The user interface will look like the following:
This was a huge improvement over CrossTag 1.5:
A) We added entities to the selector panel and now you have more room to do your tagging.
B) We added uniview (markup properties) to the selector panel and now you have more room to do your tagging.
C) We added-in use elements tab so now with a single view, you can see the elements used in the template but without this view being cluttered by all the elements that you have not used.
D) We used Outlook like slider panels which makes the product easier to understand and use.
In my next blog, I will talk about how agile development helps drive innovations and complement this innovation with customer feedback, but I wanted to give you a preview.
In the spring release we have several new features that we would like to see morph over the next 6 to 9 months. We are introducing the following:
- Tagging assistance features including comparisons of tags from other filers
- Workflow
- Automation via import from Excel
- Hierarchies for dimensional tagging
As you use these features, we want to enhance these features over times, so please email me any comments or suggestions you may have at kevin.berens@rivetsoftware.com.
Tags: CrossTag, Customer, Development, Products
