CADvanced

Now that the dust has settled from the initial launch a couple of months a go, and now I've got some of the deployment tasks automated (meaning I don't have to jump out of bed at 2am to deploy a new instance when a customer signs up), I can turn my attention to the next round of development.

I've received regular snippets of feedback from customers since launch asking for enhancements, some were minor, but the absence of some were deal breakers for users. The space that CADvanced exists in already has some established products, some of which offer a much broader range of functionality albeit, in my opinion, quite poorly implemented. Therefore some customer's expectations are quite high when they review the specifications of CADvanced.

I always knew this could be an issue. When working on the original development, I was very aware that I'd never get anything to market if I tried to do everything at once. So I focused on what seemed to be key requirements and took the stance that I was going to do less that the competitors, certainly initially, but do it much better. There would be time to address the additional functionality later.

So, at the moment I'm in that tricky period where potential customers are asking "does it do X" and I'm having to tell them "no, but it's on the roadmap". Some are happy with that, others quite reasonably stop considering CADvanced at that point. I'm hoping that as time goes on, I can win them back once their requirements are met.

So deciding what to focus on next seems like a no-brainer, what have people been asking for most? To this end I've created a public Trello board with every enhancement request I've received (I've an "ideas-and-suggestions" Discord channel on the CADvanced Discord server) and formed a "Focus group" from interested members of the Discord community. I've pointed them at the Trello board and will shortly be creating a Google Form to ask them to prioritise the enhancements. This, combined with my anecdotal experiences should, I hope, give me some clear direction.

Onwards and (I hope) upwards...!