Many thoughtful considerations are constantly being made for Dooap product development: What innovative features need to be put on the roadmap? What optimizations must be made to the software in the short term? Is this new feature providing an even better user-experience for our clients?
The list goes on and on.
At its core, Dooap product development is focused on usability to ensure we’re always providing an AP automation solution with the most optimal user experience, that saves time and money, while being fun and easy to use.
How do we stay on the right track? Take an inside look into our Head of Development Lauri Hölttä’s strategic considerations and techniques that enable us to offer the most powerful and user-friendly AP automation solution for D365 Finance.
Balancing Transformative Innovations with the Needs of Today
To create an exceptional user experience for our customers, I always manage a thoughtful balance between reacting to feature requirements for the short term and the innovations that will benefit our customers in the future. A strong organizational framework and a solid technical foundation are two of the main elements that empower our team to address urgent needs, while still innovating for the future.
Successful Development Depends on a Strong Organizational and Technical Foundation
We divide our development team into two: one team focuses on customer updates for the near-term and the other focuses on future innovations for our software.
The team focused on near-term requirements addresses client needs in a timely manner while actively avoiding the creation of “noisy neighbors” – features that create disruption throughout the software if not developed with the right considerations. It’s important to me that we keep our eyes and ears open to our users to ensure we’re always connected with what can improve our software’s usability.
The team focused on long-term requirements contemplates the innovations that will continue to advance Dooap’s features and remain ahead of the curve.
In addition to the specific focuses of these teams, we’re constantly working to provide a strong technical foundation for our software that facilitates successful feature additions. I’ve seen many organizations fall into the trap of developing a high-level of customization within their software that ultimately leads to a fragmented product that causes detrimental issues and software deterioration.
It’s vital to keep a steady balance in our product development to uphold our software performance and avoid overly customized code that derogates from the product. We focus on maintaining a stable product architecture that supports our flexible and user-friendly framework and successfully serves our entire client-base with the features they need.
The Idea of One Turned into a Reality to Benefit Many Clients
One example of this methodology in practice is when we took a customer request for a specific feature and developed it in a way that would be relevant and accessible for our other clients. The feature request was to allow the selection of a third-party system for tax calculations. The third-party tax calculation engine would be accessible in addition to the default Dynamics tax calculations. After thoughtful consideration, the feature was deemed beneficial for our broader client base, so the feature was developed in a way that other clients could leverage, without undermining Dooap’s technical foundation. This way, everyone wins – certainly the client with the initial requirement and other clients will be able to reap the benefits of our deliberate work.
3 Key Development Approaches We Follow
When considering my overall development approach, there are three elements that ensure we’re able to continuously optimize our software with client insights and keep them abreast of the latest developments.
- Automated software production line: With a fully automated DevOps “software production line” we prevent human errors by facilitating lean-thinking and reducing repetitive and manual tasks that don’t add value. We’re able to automate continually and with each product release, we enhance our software production line.
- Efficient experiments with direct customer feedback: It’s important to me that customers feel comfortable and happy with the features we develop. That’s why we work closely with our clients to gather feedback that we can incorporate to improve our product, particularly when we’re beta testing a completely new feature. We value our clients’ experience and when we’re beta testing new features the feedback they share ensures we’re always creating the most user-friendly functionality for users.
- Continual product releases: Our frequent software releases minimize the time between when the code is developed and when the code is accessible to our customers. We’re focused on quality and our goal is to provide timely access to beneficial new features so clients can quickly reap the benefits of new features when they’re developed.
Continuously Focused on the User Experience
Working closely with our customers, I believe we’ve found a stable balance that empowers our team to develop intuitive and relevant features that our clients need today, while always looking ahead to the developments that will benefit our customers in the future.
Learn more about what makes Dooap the most user-friendly AP automation software.
