Enhancements Requests Procedures

Introduction

Pasco County Information Technology (IT) Department maintains over 22 in-house developed applications. Individual departments may contact IT to report bugs or to request enhancements to these applications. To maintain consistency and manage developer workload, the following procedure has been created to manage new requests. 

Definitions 

A feature request either fixes an existing functionality, enhances existing functionality, or introduces entirely new functionality. 

Bug Reports – Items that are not working as expected. 

New Feature Requests - Introducing new features is often the most common type of enhancement request, yet the most time-consuming for product and development teams. Constant innovation is essential for the long-term growth of your product. When executed in line with your users’ needs, it can have a positive impact on retention. 

Improved Functionality - Users may suggest product improvements that are aimed to get more value out of existing features. For example, adding a new filter option, updating the UI/UX, improving the user work flow, or similar. 

Development Process

  1. Users may report bugs or request application enhancements by creating a ticket in the TDClient application. https://service.pascocountyfl.net/TDClient/114/Portal/Home/ 
    1. At no time should a request be emailed directly to the developer. Any user who emails a developer directly will be asked to put in a ticket through the TDClient website. 
  2. Each request that is submitted will first be reviewed by the Product Manager assigned to the application. 
    1. Product Manager will review the request when it comes in and reach out to the requester for additional information, if needed. 
    2. Product Manager will determine if it is a bug, new feature request, or enhancement request. 
  3. Each week, the Product Manager and Development Manager will review all new requests submitted that week. The expectation to this rule is if an Incident is submitted and needs immediate attention. 
    1. Definition of the system level requirements and impact assessment will be conducted.  
    2. Definition of the system design solution will be performed.  
    3. Estimation of the length of time to develop and test system changes will be calculated. 
    4. Request prioritization will be performed based on the request submitted and current development workload. 
    5. Requests will be tagged with key words for enhancement grouping. 
  4. Development Manager and assigned development staff will determine when the work can begin. 
  5. Product Manager will communicate projected software release date to the requester. 
  6. Assigned developer will develop code. 
  7. Department will conduct testing of new feature or fix. 
    1. This is a required stage before any new code is deployed into Production. The department must specify who will be responsible for testing new features. 
  8. Upon successful testing and department approval, code will be deployed into production following a change request creation and announcement. 
  9. Product Manager or Developer will close TDClient request. 
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