Hornbill encompasses a complex ecosystem involving various components, including the core platform, integration libraries for cloud and IT operations, and a range of business applications available in the Hornbill App Store. The platform, as well as each of these application are developed/maintained by dedicated teams, ensuring the right subject matter expertise is applied to each application. This decentralized approach to development ensures that each component can evolve independently.

Creating a unified roadmap for the entire Hornbill ecosystem would be impractical. Such a document would amalgamate the development timelines and updates of the platform itself, the cloud and IT operational integration libraries, the IT Operations Management (ITOM) integrations, the ITOM product suite, and the individual applications offered in the App Store. Given the distinct development cycles, team responsibilities, and the detailed nature of updates each component undergoes, a singular roadmap would likely become overly complex and challenging to navigate for stakeholders (both internal and for our customers).

To address this complexity, Hornbill has adopted a more granular approach to its roadmap publications. By organizing the roadmaps by product, Hornbill ensures that information is accessible and understandable, with each product/application roadmap having specific focus. Customers can easily find specific roadmaps relevant to their interests or usage within the ecosystem. This organization aids in setting clear expectations regarding new features, updates, and enhancements for each component/application of the Hornbill platform.

For customers, accessing these published roadmaps is made easy within the Hornbill platform itself. The Hornbill Solution Center serves as a hub where customers can navigate to the “Subscription” section and then to the “Roadmap Library.” This library offers an organized collection of roadmaps, allowing customers to stay informed about the developmental trajectory of the components they utilize. This transparency fosters a deeper understanding of Hornbill’s commitment to innovation and customer support, ensuring users can anticipate changes and plan accordingly.

Roadmaps

Each roadmap is presented as a visual Kanban-inspired board containing a fixed set of columns, each column has a specific meaning, allowing you to understand what features and changes are accepted for development, and in what stage of development each feature is at.

Incoming:

Items in this lane mean the enhancement/change has been fully understood (by Hornbill dev teams), has been documented, and is ready for inclusion in active development. But is not yet under active development, in effect these items are the pipeline of changes for the development teams. It takes quite a lot of effort around any feature request before it is ready to be added to the roadmap (see Getting Enhancements Added to a Hornbill Roadmap below). There is no specific time associated to when an item in this lane will be moved to the 90-Day Commit lane, and is dependant on a large number of factors discussed in the section Roadmap Inclusion Policy below.

90-Day Commit:

Any item in this lane means the item is in the Hornbill development teams planning window. As well as scheduling, development team discussions, more detailed design specifications and even prototypes are all things that happen in these 90 days. However, as the title of this lane suggests, we are committing to getting actual development work underway within 90-days of the item entering this lane.

In Progress:

Items in this lane are under active development, that means one or more developers is working on code, integration, testing and iterative cycles of the same. This generally means items here, are likely on beta instances, and are in some form or another in the product (pre-customer release) and under active development. Sometimes it is possible for items to remain in this lane while we make the feature available to customers in “Preview”. Features in preview generally means, a feature has been developed and is made generally available for customers to try out, typically by enabling through a feature flag/option/preview button. For some changes, especially those that involve significant UI changes that will likely impact (we always hope for the better of course) customers day-to-day use and/or workflows, we like to provide early access, to solicit feedback and suggestions that may help improve the change before we finally commit to production.

Completed:

Items in this lane means the work has been completed by development and is now in the product. Items are kept in this lane for 90-days after completion, after which they drop out of the lane automatically. You should always remember that, depending on the roadmap you are looking at, items in this lane shown as complete may have other dependencies, or require other applications or components to surface this capability. For example, we may implement a feature in the Hornbill ESP Platform that enables an application to implement something, for example, we may add a feature to Email templates editor, but for you to see this feature, another application may also need to make changes. we do not include “internal” items on customer facing roadmaps in order to keep customer-facing roadmaps meaningful, but its sometimes unavoidable that these things can bleed through from time to time.

Roadmap Timelines for Feature Development

Outside of being generally asked for “a roadmap” this question is almost always followed by a question seeking timelines in order to answer to the “when will I get the things I asked for?” and as is the case for almost every serious software company, there is never a simple answer to that question. The official position is, we never apply, and advise our customers NOT to expect any service-level commitments on product feature/enhancement requests. Of course, with our Customer-First value held close to our hearts, we do our best to include as much, and as quickly as we can. Hornbill is a broadly scoped solution, with complex and deep capabilities serving a wide range of our collective customer’s needs.

Technology and Security landscapes are moving targets that we have to continuously adapt to, we have strategic, commercial and competitive imperatives that we must meet, security posture evolution and continuous improvements in terms of reliability and scalability. As well as all of those considerations, we also focus on delivering as much as we can to support individual customer needs too.

Times between releases can be anything from days to months, depending on what we are doing, although we aim to keep release cycles for each product and applications as small as possible, once a week is a typical release cadence we prefer. So, the answer to the question, how long does it take to get my feature in the product is really “as soon as we can, given all of our other priorities”. Ultimately, if you have a “business critical” need for something that is not in the product, then you should speak to us and we might be able to help, but in all honestly, we do not allow individual customer needs re-prioritize our roadmaps because it would be irresponsible and unfair on other customers to do so, so we are likely to respond with something along the lines of “in that case, perhaps Hornbill is not fit for purpose for your needs at this time”.

Roadmap Inclusion Policy

Purpose

This Roadmap Inclusion Policy outlines the criteria, processes, and guidelines for including features, enhancements, and significant bug fixes in our product roadmaps. Our aim is to ensure a transparent, collaborative, and strategic approach to product development that aligns with our company’s vision, customer needs, and market trends.

Scope

This policy applies to all products and services developed and maintained by our company. It covers the inclusion of new features, enhancements to existing features, and significant bug fixes in the product roadmaps.

Criteria for Inclusion

1. Strategic Alignment: The proposed item must align with the overall strategic goals of the company and the product’s vision.
2. Customer Value/Impact: The item should have a demonstrable impact on improving customers general satisfaction, solving customers pain points, or delivering customers value, determined in the context of customers collectively, not individually.
3. Non-Prescriptive: The item should not prescribe a specific function but should instead be expressed as a product enhancement/addition in terms of business value.
4. Market Trends: Consideration of emerging market trends and technologies that could enhance the value we deliver to our customers and give us a competitive edge.
5. Feasibility: Assessment of the technical, resource, and time feasibility of implementing the proposed item in the context of the overall solution.
6. Regulatory and Compliance Needs: Ensuring the product complies with relevant laws, regulations, and standards required by our customers as well as our own quality standards.
7. Security and Privacy: Enhancements that improve the security and privacy posture of our product.

Process for Inclusion

1. Starting with a Discussion: One of the most important steps to adding an item to our roadmap is getting to the point of Complete Understanding of the requirement. ensuring that requirement is fully aligned with our roadmap, general direction, and Criteria for Inclusion. Internally originated items that are included in the roadmap for development would come out of numerous internal conversations, meetings, working groups as well as furthering our strategic and maturity needs. For external enhancement requests, we have a very specific process we follow… please see Asking for Enhancements To Be Included in the Hornbill Roadmap
2. Review and Prioritization: The Product Management team will review submissions based on the above criteria. Items will be prioritized based on strategic importance, customer impact, and resource availability.
3. Stakeholder Feedback: Shortlisted items will be shared with relevant stakeholders for feedback and further validation.
4. Approval and Scheduling: The Product Steering Committee will make final decisions on the inclusion and scheduling of roadmap items.
5. Communication: Approved roadmap items will be communicated to all stakeholders, including teams and customers, through appropriate channels, adding these items where needed to the Incoming Lane in the appropriate roadmap.

Updating Hornbill Roadmaps

Roadmaps are dynamic documents that will be reviewed and updated regularly to reflect progress, changing priorities, and new insights. You can view our published Roadmaps at any time to see the latest development activity that applies.

Feedback and Suggestions

We encourage feedback and suggestions from all stakeholders to continuously improve our roadmap planning and execution process. Internal stakeholders will always use our internal workspaces, while customers should always use our community forums to submit feedback, suggestions, ideas and product enhancement related questions.

Governance

This policy is governed by the Product Management team and is subject to periodic review and updates to ensure it remains relevant and effective in guiding our roadmap planning and development processes.

Requesting Enhancements or Feature Requests for inclusion in the Hornbill Roadmap

We are always excited to hear about product enhancements or suggestions, the collective wisdom of our customers is a very important source of knowledge, ideas and experience. To provide the most amount of value to the widest possible audience, we have to carefully manage enhancement and feature requests, ensuring we give each request consideration, not only on its own merit, but in the context of the whole product, its strategic roadmap and our customer community.

Every customer originated enhancement or feature request starts with a discussion. Sometimes, simple enhancement requests are self-evident, for example, a request for something like “would it be possible to add a keyboard shortcut to invoke the print command” would hardly require a discussion at all. However, in practice, enhancement requests are rarely that straightforward and tend to be nuanced in some way. Each customer’s use of Hornbill is different, because each customers organization has unique (to them) ways of working and using Hornbill to support that work. Hornbill’s products are very customizable, so for the most part, tailoring can be done by a customer to meet their specific needs without product changes being required.

For the avoidance of any doubt, any discussion that leads to an enhancement request would lead to a clear and well documented (in the discussion) definition of what the requirement is, almost certainly summarized by one of Hornbill’s product team clarifying what has been understood as the requirement. This is what would constitute a discussion with clear outcome that leads to a product enhancement request.

It might be that a particular part of our solution is not customizable at all, or not customizable enough to meet a specific need, or it might be that there is a function that does not even exist, that should, or could be added to make the product more useful/valuable to a customer to help a specific use case. On our experience, customers will generally (and rightly) think about solving problems or improving efficiency/workflows in the context of their own organization, and more often than not, what makes sense in one context, does not always make sense in another context.

In order for us to clearly understand what is being asked for, this often means getting a more thorough understanding of how a customer’s specific scenario applies to what is being asked for, and then, once we understand that requirement fully, and the value such a change would add, Hornbill’s product team(s) then need to consider that change in the context of our strategic roadmap, overall use case and the generally understood landscape of how our product is used more widely by our customers.

When asking for a product enhancement, its important not to be prescriptive in your request, rather, what we generally look for is the business use-case. By this we mean, if you just ask for a widget X or function Y, or button Z, or API abc etc, that may well be meaningful and obviously to your own use case, and meet a specific need you have, but we will likely not understand that more broadly, and so are very unlikely to progress that request into an accepted feature request. We will always seek to understand the business value, so if the business requirement (aka what you are trying to achieve/what business outcome you expect from the product change) is not apparent in the foundation of what you are asking for, then it is very difficult to assess the request against our Criteria For Inclusion and therefore would not be considered/may not be answered or responded to.

When asking for an enhancement please make sure you first express the enhancement in terms of business need and business outcome, and, if you want to you can also include a suggestion as to specifically what you might change to achieve that. Doing this helps us better understand the need, and opens the possibility that we might be able to suggest an alternative or even better way to achieve the same outcome.

How we manage feature requests received from Customer’s or Partner’s

The first thing to say is, outside very exceptional circumstances where it would be inappropriate to do so (for example if there are security concerns or real commercial sensitivity for a specific organization), we ONLY accept feature requests via our community forums. That is, if you would like to see a change to the product, the starting point is to “raise it on the forums”. It is not uncommon for a customer to ask their account exec in an account review meeting for enhancements, but we will always respond with, please ask that question on the forum. The reason for this is, we simply do not track internal requests for features that have not been committed to a roadmap, in fact we specifically and purposefully do not just log one-liner enhancement requests, simply because doing so simply creates a huge list of one-liner feature requests that no body understands, and essentially ends up being one big undeliverable backlog of items.

Instead, we take each and every enhancement request as a discussion, this affords us a number of things…

• Our forums are connected to our internal workspaces, so, if you ask a question on, for example, the Hornbill ESP Platform forum, your post will be relayed to an internal Hornbill workspace and all developers, product stakeholders, support, consultants and others will most likely get sight of, and be generally aware of the question you have asked.
• By posting your question on the forum, we now have a connected communication channel between you directly and our internal product folks, allowing anyone in Hornbill that needs to, additional questions, clarifications, suggestions, or even feedback that this is not something we would consider.
• By posting your question on our public forums, all other customers who have interest in the product you are asking about will also see your question, they may have other ideas, contribution or even offer support for the thing you are asking for.
• Because we relay these questions into our internal workspaces there is a very good chance this will trigger some internal conversations, and will almost always trigger some kind of response back on the forum, that might be seeking more information, or trying to garner a better understanding of what is being asked for, might include one or more suggestions as to how you might achieve the outcome you want in an alternative way, or could even be a flat, No, we would not add that.

Sometimes though, you should keep in mind that you may not get any response from Hornbill, we do not offer SLA commitments on enhancement requests, but despite that, if you feel something should be added to the product, you should ask anyway, even if you do not see a response, you are raising awareness of your requirement, of the suggestion and that will be seen by our engineers and product people. Sometimes ideas and suggestions are really good, but the timing for inclusion is off, it can be as simple as that.

We will always do our best to respond to every request, but we are not perfect, and things can get missed, when this happens, please feel free to bump it every now and then if you have not seen any response in a couple of weeks or more.

Things you can do to improve the chances of getting your feature request included

It is possible to improve the chances of getting a response, and even getting your requested feature included in the product. These include: -

Timing: For example, if we are doing a lot of, say, email related changes, and you ask for something email related, the email system is currently top-of-mind with the developers so your ask might naturally just drop into that.

Specificity: The more specific you are, and the easier your request is to get into the head space of the product people/developers at Hornbill, the more likely your request will make it through. We are all bust people, and as we mentioned before, it can be a lot of work/time mentally to translate a requirement for a customer-specific scenario into a viable piece of code. So if the nature of your ask is very specific and self-evident, then its likely to be easily understood by our developers, will not need translating by a business analyst and so on, and when that happens, so long as it meets the other criteria in our Criteria for Inclusion then this is likely to make it quite quickly.

Generalized: The more generalized the function, the more it will deliver against the ‘’‘Customer Value/Impact’‘’ for customers in the general, the higher the likelihood for inclusion. Conversely, if your requirement is highly specific to your organization, but you can meet that need buy asking for a more Generalized customization capability that would help your specific need, and if that more generalized customization capability would be generally useful to customers overall, then that would help move things forwards.

Strategic Alignment: We are generally moving towards our strategic product goals, primarily driven by the competitive landscape within which we operated, and the aspirations we have in the marketplace. Anything you ask for that is aligned with those goals are obviously more likely to make it into the product.

Work With Us: At the heart of our mission is a simple truth: our success is intertwined with yours. When it comes to product improvements, we are committed to understanding your needs deeply and accurately, ensuring that any product updates or enhancements we consider are perfectly aligned with what you require and our products strategic goals. We believe in the power of collaboration; your insights into your business challenges are invaluable to us. After all, you’re the experts in your field, and by sharing your expertise, you help us refine and improve our solutions. We think of development enhancements requests as a partnership, and we invite you to join us in a collaborative process. The better we understand your needs—through clear communication and engagement—the more effectively we can work together towards implementing solutions that truly meet your requirements. Our engineering and product teams are ready to consider any requirements, but this journey requires mutual effort and understanding of our process. Remember, every step we take towards enhancing our product is driven by a desire to add more value to your business. We’re not just looking for feedback; we’re seeking to learn from your experience, to innovate and evolve in ways that support your success. Engaging with us, sharing your insights, and being open to the collaborative process not only helps us meet your needs more effectively but also ensures that we continue to deliver solutions that empower you and your business. Let’s work together to create something exceptional.

Roadmap Frequently Asked Questions

I have asked for something to be added to the product on the forum and I have not had any response from Hornbill?

We do not commit to any specific service-level agreements for product enhancement requests. You should be aware that, even if you do not get a response, by asking the question you will have raised some awareness of your requirement internally at Hornbill, as we collectively see everything, these things do not go unnoticed. Try to follow the guidance above to improve the livelihood of getting a response and/or getting your ask included. If your issue remains unanswered and you feel its business critical, then please talk to your account manager, we may need to recognize that Hornbill is not able to meet your specific critical business needs at this time.

Why is there no movement in the roadmap items?

The latest roadmap for respective products are distributed to your instance each time the product or application is released to the ‘live’ stream. It is possible for the delivery of features to be one release out of sync, simply to do with a combination of timing and general roadmap content management. The roadmap will give you a good insight as to what is coming, and whats already been delivered. The timestamps on the card indicate the date/time the card makes it into the lane its currently present in.

I Noticed that a card appeared in the Complete column which I have never seen before?

This is more than possible, because its not a requirement that each request starts on the left Incoming Lane and works its way through each lane. It is very comment, that, as we are developing our strategic roadmap, or addressing usability issues, security issues or other unplanned changes, that lead to items that we consider “roadmap noteworthy”, then we will add a card to the roadmap, implement it, and move it to completed before the next release of that product/application. This is not an uncommon thing to happen. What is important though, is, all “roadmap noteworthy” changes will make it into the Completed column, so you can see what has been delivered.

As a significant Hornbill client, we’ve encountered a critical business need that isn’t currently addressed by Hornbill. Is it possible to adapt the product to meet this requirement?

At Hornbill, we value feedback and needs of all our customers, regardless of size. We strive to balance individual requests with the overall strategic direction and benefit to our entire customer base. While we carefully consider every request, including those from our larger clients, our commitment is to ensure that any modifications or enhancements we make to our product are in the best interest of all our users. We’re always keen to explore how we can meet your business-critical needs and invite you to share your requirements with us. Together, we can discuss potential solutions or workarounds that align with our product roadmap and serve the wider Hornbill community.

If our organization is open to funding specific development of product features, can Hornbill accommodate tailored development of product features to meet our specific/urgent needs?

At Hornbill, we’re dedicated to meeting our customers’ needs and are open to discussions about how we can support your unique business requirements. While we primarily focus on delivering features that benefit all our customers and align with our strategic roadmap, we do offer bespoke development and consulting services. These services are designed to address your specific needs either directly through Hornbill or via our extensive partner network. Our aim is to find the best solution that aligns with your goals without deviating from our core product strategy. In cases where bespoke development can contribute to the broader utility and customizability of our platform, we might integrate such enhancements into our product. This approach ensures that we continue to evolve Hornbill in a way that benefits all users while addressing specific customer needs through tailored solutions.

I’m quite busy and don’t have the time to participate in the Hornbill user community. Is it possible to contact my Hornbill account manager to submit a feature request instead?

We understand that your time is valuable, and we aim to make our support and feature request processes as efficient as possible. For feature requests, we encourage using the Hornbill Forums. This approach ensures that your ideas are openly discussed and thoroughly evaluated by both the community and our product teams. Direct requests to account managers or through support tickets are redirected to the forums to ensure transparency and to foster community engagement. This method helps us in gathering comprehensive details and understanding the context of each request accurately. We’ve found that this collaborative approach significantly enhances our ability to make informed decisions about product development. For guidance on effectively submitting a feature request and increasing its chances for inclusion, please refer to our Work With Us section. Our goal is to maintain a clear and open channel of communication with our users, ensuring that every suggestion is considered with the attention it deserves.

Roadmap Items in the completed column do not show which release each item is associated with?

You might have noticed that items marked as completed on our roadmap don’t specify the release they’re associated with. We want to explain why and how you can find detailed release information. Our roadmap is designed to showcase the progress of engineering tasks, both ongoing and completed. Due to the nature of our release process, which is carefully structured through a four-stage pipeline, it’s challenging to assign a fixed release number to each completed item immediately. This is because any given build in our pipeline might be delayed or revised if it encounters testing or validation issues. Such delays can vary, affecting when a completed item is officially released. For those looking to find out precisely which features or updates have been included in a specific build or version, the best resource is our product release notes. These notes (also available in our solution center) are meticulously updated to include details on the features, changes, and fixes in each build. They serve as a comprehensive guide to what’s new and improved in every version of our product, ensuring you have the most accurate and up-to-date information. We understand how important it is for you to stay informed about the latest developments and enhancements to our product. That’s why we’re committed to providing clear, detailed release notes alongside our roadmap, helping you navigate and make the most of our evolving solutions.