Why you can’t always have what you want

Simon Hutchinson – Reckon Product Management.

Tomatoes – Don’t need those!

Overview• The development cycle

• A few scenarios that regularly occur

• What about a patch?

• PSG tells me they sent it on to development but I never hear back

• The typical Reckon development cycle

• Things that can really make things tough

We’re on your side

• We understand the frustration that occurs when you find issues in our software

• If we could fix absolutely everything we would

• We do take your feedback on board, as you will see later in this presentation

• We take pride in the software we produce and ‘bugs’ hurt

A few scenarios

Compliance Changes

• Each year we sit down to determine what will go into the product this year

• These decisions are generally around features that we want to add to improve the product

• As you may know we regularly attend ATO meetings to discuss changes. We are also in close contact with the IRD on changes.

• Often these ATO meetings change our development priorities due to upcoming compliance. The IRD can also throw a spanner in the works.

• Compliance is and always will be the number one priority

Government Rules

• Regularly when the developers are working on compliance changes they have questions

• There is a hotline and email address setup to deal with these questions from developers

• However they are not allowed to answer questions on draft laws

• Regularly we are working with draft legislation and have to interpret it

• We have to do this to deliver compliance on time to our users

Government dissolving

• One of the more recent problems occurred when the Federal Election was announced

• This leads to the Government moving into caretaker mode

• In caretaker mode the ATO/IRD is not allowed to answer or talk about any questions directly related to Government policy and law which has not been passed parliament yet

• This caused delays into interpretations of Paid Parental Leave in Australia last year

External Factors

• As some of you are aware Reckon develops for international markets such as New Zealand and Asia

• Recently the NZ Government has given indications that it is flagging a number of changes to its taxation and revenue systems

• Like in Australia, compliance is the number one priority

• If we had a dollar for each time Australian compliance has cost NZ a feature, we’d be pretty rich by now.

What happens when I tell PSG about a problem

• This has been one of the issues of angst from the AC/AP network this year

• PSG does tell us of an issue and it gets logged in our bug tracking system

• It is then attempted to be replicated and if it can be, risk assessed

• Sometimes we don’t get enough information to look at the issues

Information we need

• Operating system and Service Pack

• What version of QuickBooks and if there is a patch installed

• Can you get it to happen over and over again or is it intermittent

• Is it running through Terminal Services

• Brand of computer where applicable

Reckon Development Process

• Product Management build a draft scope of the features to be included in the product

• Escalations meeting then occurs to decide what needs to be looked at.

• Draft scope is taken to Senior Management and then signed off

• Scope is then presented to the AP Council for feedback

• Discussion about the feedback from AP Council

Reckon Development Process (cont.)

• Scope is finalised and documents written for development

• QA and Development are shown the documents and ideas for their feedback

• QA and Development are shown the design and changes tweaked based on feedback

• Product is developed and tested

• Beta Test Occurs. Live data fed back to Reckon

Reckon Development Process (cont.)

• Bug reports are analysed and we try to replicate the issues

• Final testing Occurs

• Product release

Terms you may hear when dealing with us

• Alpha Phase – Initial development and testing phase

• Feature Complete – The day we lock the products features down

• BETA Phase – A beta test of the Feature Complete product

• Regression – The second last phase. We test that new features have not broken old features.

QA Processes

• Each defect (bug) with the product is entered with a rating system of tweak through to block.

• A block is something that completely breaks the product. The developers have to fix this issue by the end of the day if possible.

• Examples of block defects include program won’t open, old file not found and payroll won’t calculate any tax.

• The whole office knows when we find a block

QA Processes (cont.)

• Other bugs are entered into the system with a rating system and priority

• Due to time lines tough decisions need to be made. Frequently towards the end a major becomes a block to ensure that we fix it. Some defects are lowered after more research.

• In general a defect with an acceptable workaround is less likely to be fixed then one where a workaround exists.

A few other things that affect decisions

• User guides

• Boxes and marketing pamphlets

• Legislation changes

Why do we not release patches that often?

• Some of you may have noticed the US has in the past released around 20 patches a year

• It is a huge strain on development and has an impact on the business. Cost/Benefit analysis.

• Releasing a patch for issues with a workaround can lead to more issues

• It has an impact on future products

Patch process

• Gather data from users about operating systems, versions and the issue itself

• Perform an analysis on the risk and the potential impact of the fix

• Determine the scope of the patch process. Confirm that we have the correct fix specified in a document.

• Usual software development life cycle then kicks in.

AC Council – Your Voice

• As of 2008 we meet with a selected number of AP’s every 3 or so months in Australia to discuss issues. We want to start hearing from NZ AC’s.

• If you have issues, and they are raised via the AC Council, they are discussed with the Reckon departments affected.

• The AP Council in Australia has had significant impact on the release of our products and has been very positive. We hope to do the same in NZ.

• Don’t be afraid to raise problems with them

Reporting an issue

• Give as much information as possible to us. Operating system, multiuser, what version, what computer system etc

• Submit via PSG

• The more information we have the easier it will be to trigger it in the office.

BETA Testing

• Most important phase of our development cycle. Giving it to you to try.

• We hear your voices about it breaks my old quickbooks, I don’t have time etc and are improving things

• All future QuickBooks BETA’s will be conducted via the Online Infrastructure. Those who want the actually install files can request them.

Questions!