[New Process Improvement Need]: Communication Process for Cross-Customer Projects.

[tariqksoliman]

Checked for duplicates

Yes - I've already checked

It might be similar to #66 but I'm reading that as managing many workers -> many projects instead of 1 project -> many customer groups

Category

Information Sharing - documentation design, templates, communication, etc.

Describe the need

We have a need to improve customer bug, deliveries, requests, etc. communications between customer-bases of a single project.

Sample use cases (taken from the project MMGIS):

• Customer A found a bug and puts in a request to fix it. Customer B also finds something related to the bug and asks for help. Had there been better communication of Customer A's bug to Customer B, Customer B would've known a simple workaround and would not have asked for help.

• Customer A wants a new feature added at the same time Customer B wants another new feature added. Both feature requests are, say, 60% similar and 40% different. How can customers know each other better so that they can leverage each other's wants and costs, share ideas and know why some features are being driven certain ways -- without having the project act as a communication middleman between up to, say, a dozen customers.

• Customer A is also another development team and wants to track issues, tickets, progress, handle communications and hold meetings their own way. These issues, meeting notes, emails, progress, do not always fully or quickly find their way to, say, GitHub tickets and nor does Customer A regularly check the status of, or are even aware of, other Customers.

• Customer A would prefer a new feature but cannot pay for it. How best can that feature be communicated to see if there is any strong want for it among our other customers.

• A new feature was released. I want to notify all relevant customers about it easily -- not send multiple emails and slack messages or wait until they ask about it.

Ideas

• Shared slack channel
• Regular Email Changelog, New Bugs, Upcoming features
• GitHub Projects
• Monthly meeting between all customers
• Something like https://canny.io/ or https://www.uservoice.com/ ?

[riverma]

This is a really important topic @tariqksoliman - thank you for bringing it up. CC'ing @hookhua who's been thinking about this problem with respect to HySDS. CC'ing @NASA-AMMOS/slim-tsc and @NASA-AMMOS/slim-psc as well here.

I feel like industry has handled this pretty well via the below two:

1. A centralized ticket system as the first place customers go to file tickets / check if existing tickets reflect their needs (would need to educate users about this). Ticket gets worked on, communicated, and closed. New version of software released / made available.
2. All end customers get notified of upgraded software version push notification within the software's UI to encourage upgrades, website bulletin, or via e-mail.

Thoughts @tariqksoliman?