CHANGE MANAGEMENT
CHANGE CONTROL PROCESS
All new product features and architecture improvements (components) pass through each the following steps at least once. A component may pass through certain phases several times before it can be moved to the next stage.
- Requirements gathering
Market-facing team members meet with the Product team on a regular basis to share requirements for new product components. - Specification
A detailed specification is drawn up by the Product team, including diagrams, descriptions and mockups where applicable. - Review
The specification is reviewed and signed-off by the relevant party. - Customer consultation
Where relevant, customers are consulted to provide feedback on the component specification. - Estimation
The Engineering Team estimates the relative size of development work. - Roadmap
The component is placed on the Product Roadmap and assigned a priority relative to other tasks. - Development
Development begins when the component reaches the top of the Roadmap queue. All development work includes (where appropriate):- Unit tests
- Functional tests
- Internal code review
- QA
Completed components pass through quality assurance testing on staging servers by the QA team. - Documentation
New components are documented on the Knowledge Base by the Support team (where applicable) for the benefit of all customers. - Notification
All affected customers are notified at least one week in advance of the release of new features. Opt-in or opt-out preferences may apply to some components. - Release
The component is released on production systems. - Monitoring and feedback
The performance of the component is monitored on an ongoing basis and customer feedback is sought to improve future components.
OPT-IN
Customers may need to opt-in before certain features are enabled for their account. This applies particularly to paid-for optional extras.
OPT-OUT
Customers are given the option to opt-out of certain features as they wish.