How we set priorities

The add-on development department specializes in development of new add-ons that enhance the default functionality of the CS-Cart platform. We aim at developing new add-ons as well as improving the existing ones. We understand that all our clients seek support from the add-on developers, that is why we render technical support and prepare instructions.

We value each and every of our clients, that’s why every request that we receive is equal to us. Our ideal tomorrow has no priorities, and all client requests are responded “right here, right now”. We are striving for this tomorrow and it will eventually come someday.

All our clients are equal. Each task is important. However, when we have 100 important tasks, we have to categorize and prioritize them in order to pick the most important ones. Of course, we could employ more developers, but it’s not the way out and resources are always limited. Business is not done like this.

For now, we have to determine priorities. We try to do that as much profitable for you as we can taking into account your business needs.

How do we prioritise tasks?

How do we determine which are the most important ones? We look at the tasks from different angles and differentiate them by the following criteria:

  1. Task type
  2. Importance level for the client
  3. Source
  4. Affect on client’s business
  5. Level of value for the client
  6. Development cost
  7. Developer workload

As a result, the task importance is made up of the balance of all these points.

Let’s review each type in detail.

Task type

There are 5 task types and their priorities:

  1. Installation. If you cannot install an add-on by following our instructions, we can offer you our assistance with installation.
  2. Bugs. They are inevitable in the code of any software.
  3. Adaptation. Our add-ons are compatible with the default version of CS-Cart and/or Multi-Vendor. If you have any third-party modifications in your store, our add-ons will probably require adaptation.
  4. Individual case. Something goes wrong for some reason and we need to examine each case separately.
  5. Setup. It’s not enough to just install and activate our add-ons, most of them require configuration of the settings.

We categorize all requests by the task type in order to determine the level of importance.

Importance level for the client

There are only two types of tasks here. It cannot be ‘critical, but not that much’ or ‘nothing big, but very important’. And yes, we do understand that there’s nothing more important for you than your request, but we look at your request with the eyes of your business and see two extremes here:

  1. Urgent - your business is affected and cannot function normally.
  2. Trivial - your site may look bad, our add-on may disappoint or irritate you, but your business is in no way affected. You surely want to say, “If it hadn’t happened, I would have earned more money” in such a situation, but please be honest with yourself.

Is my request Urgent or Trivial?

Urgent:

  1. Checkout does not work.
  2. Impossible to place an order.
  3. The website is unavailable.
  4. Disabling add-on does not resolve the issue.

An urgent task is a task with the Individual case type.

Trivial:

1.The rest cases.

A trivial task is a task with the Bug, Adaptation, Installation, and Setup types.

Source

There are two sources of requests: internal and external. All the requests that we get from our clients are external, whereas all requests that come from our developers team are internal. The main rule is: external tasks are of greater importance than internal ones.

Affect on client’s business

You may think that your situation is critical and requires immediate action. But it you look at it from the business point, you will see that it’s not. The most important functionality for business is site performance and the ability to place orders. If these functions are fine in your case, your business is not affected.

Level of value for the client

You constantly give us suggestions and ideas for improving our add-ons. Before we give these improvements the green light, we need to decide how valuable they are for our clients. How do we do that? We answer the following questions:

  1. Will it be useful for all of our 100 clients?
  2. What will it improve in the client’s business?
  3. Will it simplify the client’s work?
  4. What does it improve: site management, sales, store look-and-feel, promotion or SEO?

Development cost

Say, you have $10,000, how would you spend it? Would you implement 10 major customizations, or would you rather develop 100 minor ones? What if you need to take into account 1000 more client needs besides your request? That’s about it. Our resources are limited and we can’t go wrong with distributing them.

Developer workload

Even if we want something too badly, a miracle won’t happen without available resources. Why? Because the workload should be planned beforehand. We select the most important tasks from the less important ones for our daily workload. If we just put off what is most important now and start doing what we want badly, it will be a pointless venture. It does not get any more straightforward than that.