How we prioritize new features in 2024

[aronmolnar]

We currently have one full-time developer and three part-time contributors in the SysReptor project. We strive for the best resource allocation, which is why we defined how we want to prioritize features.
Those features include product improvements and measures to push our professional subscription (which we need to fund development and maintenance) and keep our internal processes efficient.

This is how we prioritize features in 2024 (from high to low prio):

1. Maintenance
   Up-to-date software components and the elimination of bugs are prerequisites of good software.
2. Quick-Wins for UX improvements and requests from Professional customers
   Good usability is one of the pillars of our product. If we can still improve it by minor adaptions, we'll prioritize them. We also prioritize feature requests from our professional customers, especially those with low efforts.
3. More value for professional customers
   Maintaining good software is complex and expensive. We're happy to provide a free product for many users. Professional customers fund the software and allow it to be maintained further. This is why we want to increase value, especially for Professional customers.
4. Performance measurement
   We focused a lot on building the best product so far. We do not have a good overview of key figures of our software (how many signups are at our free labs, access to a playground, how many SysReptor users, etc.). This is something we must improve.
5. Distribution of community version
   We are happy that there are many users of our free community version. Those users recommend SysReptor and spread the word, which might bring us Professional customers to fund our project. We are on a good way of spreading the word, which is why this item is currently at the bottom of our prioritization list.
6. Improve security
   On the one hand, SysReptor already has many security features (MFA, FIDO, data encryption at rest, encrypted project archiving with four-eyes principle, a good architecture for rendering jobs, etc.), on the other hand, we see that security is not requested by our users (yes, even if it's a security product). If at all, it is a check on compliance checklists. Additional security measures do not help our product (missing security, however, would do damage, but that's not the case).
7. Reduction of administrative efforts
   such as license management, a ticketing system for customer requests, etc. This is currently not a big pain.

We encourage everyone to describe feature ideas and submit them as an Issue or Discussion on GitHub.