OASES Product Roadmap 2021

OASES Product Roadmap 2021

This week, Product Manager, Adam Frost launched the OASES Product Roadmap which provides a broad strategic picture of how OASES will evolve over the next twelve months and beyond.
We caught up with him to learn about what that means for our customers and which direction he feels the software is taking.

Why is the product roadmap such an important part of OASES’ development lifecycle?

The roadmap communicates our strategic direction. We start with the product strategy, identifying opportunities and then defining initiatives and features that deliver the strategy. These anticipated outcomes are arranged onto a timeline showing when work is expected to start and end for each feature. It provides high-level focus for our internal specialisms and allows us to work together to ensure not only the development but also delivery, support, implementation, sales and marketing teams are aligned with our common goal. I also hope the roadmap will act as a call to arms for our customers to collaborate more closely with us.
The roadmap is only a plan and we don’t expect it, once specified, to be mindlessly executed. It is important to continuously challenge the assumptions of the current strategy and assess changing market opportunities. We may find that we abandon a piece of work if it becomes clear we cannot deliver the value for our customers that we set out to. Other priorities will arise and we will doubtless find that the work delivered will be different to that initially laid out on the roadmap.

The yearly roadmap presentation is a key event for all at OASES and you must have loads of things you want to accomplish over the next twelve months, tell me how you decide what new features and updates make it into the plan?

Ultimately, we are driven by our users’ needs. Some items may not directly arise from the customers wish list but there is always a lot going on behind the scenes to ensure we continue to provide value for our them. We have recently launched our Ideas Portal where any user can log a good idea they have for OASES.
These are visible to all the other users who can comment and vote on the ideas they are moved by. We monitor the conversation and try to eke the underlying motivation to better understand their needs. Each idea is scored for feasibility and strategic fit. Ideas that score well or are popular mor often than not are added to the roadmap.

The OASES Ideas Portal can be accessed by clicking this link

If you’re an OASES customer but can’t access the portal, please contact Adam on [email protected]

We have over 130 customers at OASES – What kind of customer research do you conduct and how much does it influence the direction you take with the roadmap?

It is essential to talk to customers to understand their strategic direction, industry changes and particular pain points. Ideas with mass appeal are interesting to us as the feasibility case is straightforward. However, we are keen to disrupt old ways of working by leveraging recent technological progress.
We need to continue the conversation with users during development and implementation to tap into users’ creativity and ensure we are delivering value. I believe our customers who have already worked with us in the past have made a great contribution to the OASES success and are assured that the whichever feature they’ve contributed to, meets their needs.

What do our customers like (and dislike) about OASES?

Customers love the breadth and depth of OASES functionality that has been built over the years. I believe our continued airworthiness features are among the best anywhere.
Users generally dislike using software that doesn’t allow them to complete their workflow efficiently. Efficiency is particularly important where data is highly dynamic such as short-term planning and material provisioning. As such, these are the next two major areas laid out on the roadmap. Contemporary technologies such as mobility and remote access are becoming expected attributes of any software offering. Our new Web and Mobile platforms are therefore the preferred home for new functionality.

Without giving too much away, what’s new in 2021 for OASES customers?

The main theme this year is to provide better tools for line maintenance planning and resource management. Generally improved mobility and growing integration with operations systems and electronic tech logs at our customers gives us an opportunity to do much more than was previously practical. I believe that clear and timely provision of pertinent information to the user will result in better operational decisions leading to improved performance.

If you’re an OASES customer and would like to collaborate with the development team, helping to influence the evolution of OASES with your ideas and insight, please get in contact with your customer account manager today. We’d love to have you on board.

OASES Ideas Portal access link