Product Roadmaps and Transparency
These are two broad topics that I’d like to explore some more, following up on @dipro’s post above.
First - touching on transparency and keeping users informed - it looks like in Q4 2019 the Monday team stopped updating the all-platform roadmap. Then the link went dead, with a redirect to the home page. Since then, there were numerous unanswered forum posts affirming the high value of the roadmap and asking where it went and when it would reappear. Six+ months went by until @dipro’s post (much appreciated) in this thread explaining, for the first time I can find, what happened and mentioning a new roadmap strategy.
Looking forward, this is an example of how Monday can do better by improving transparency and user knowledge, and managing expectations for Monday’s development plans. Important decisions like this should be communicated to users up front, even if just to say “We need to change this thing because…, and we don’t have a plan to share yet, but we’ll keep you updated here.” (And then follow through on the updates.)
Second, I have seen many Monday responses to feature requests that go something like this, “Hey, thanks so much for providing that great input (or telling us about this need / problem you’re having)! I’ll be sure to forward that along to our development team!” While that initial responsiveness is great and very appreciated, it is not helpful if there isn’t substantive followup or information provided to tell the user what the development team actually decides it will do about the request. And if action will be taken, then providing ongoing info on progress and timeframe. This is equally true if the decision is to do nothing or back-burner it because it’s a relatively low priority for x-y-z reasons.
Third, with the decision made to no longer share a platform-wide roadmap, I suggest additional effort by the Monday team to improve the visibility and organization of overall development priorities and roadmaps for specific features / functionality. More broadly, I would like to see a single space (Monday web page or new section of the Community platform?) dedicated to informing users about the current plans, progress, and timeframes for specific development priorities. @dipro’s post above is a perfect example of an update that should be made available in a “development hub” info space where many people can see it.
Rather than having bits and pieces of info scattered throughout the forum, this dedicated space would summarize and update big-picture priorities, provide info on development team org. structure (with leads identified), and list links to all roadmaps that Monday decides to share. Each roadmap could also have it’s own dedicated discussion thread to capture (again, in one place) all of the user input, questions, etc., as well as Monday team updates, about development progress. This would further benefit from more direct input by the development team members, like @oron’s post above. Having a single, well-organized development hub for Monday and its users to track and communicate about specific priority development topics is key.
To summarize my suggestions:
- Improve pro-active communication with users about development plans, progress fixing / completing existing features, and significant changes (like the roadmap)
- Improve responsiveness and transparency regarding what action, if any, will be considered / taken to address user requests, together with follow-up progress and updates
- All of the above would be greatly facilitated by creating a dedicated “development hub”, for priorities / plans, development team structure, and tracking and communicating about high priority / high demand development features and fixes via the roadmaps.
Thanks to the Monday team for engaging in this discussion and considering the suggestions!
