[Revised Apr 02]
Many excellent ideas come from user suggestions, and these are always welcomed and are put on the 'Priority list' for consideration at the regular program design meetings. If possible fax suggestions through as this enables an idea to better expressed and understood than by phone.
- The most useful suggestions are those which improve the power of the program in ways that generate extra income for users, or save then significant amounts of time.
- The least useful are those where a new user would like their old DOS software's features cloned in Windows.
Range of features
A program that tries to be all things to all people becomes bloated, difficult to use, and unreliable. To avoid this fate 'RxOne' is designed to meet 95% of the needs of 95% of Australian community pharmacies. It does not attempt to meet 100% of the needs of any user. On a standard package every user will find a few things that do not work the way they would like, or are not provided because it is a standard package rather than one made to the requirements of a single user. Similarly, there will be a small number of pharmacies with needs so specialised that no standard package would be suitable. But the report generator or direct access to the raw data can provide for most specialised needs.
Desirability of features
Priority list suggestions are considered for;
1. User acceptance. Will they cause some other users a problem, cause them extra keystrokes, or slow the program down?. This is critical as the first requirement is for the program not to be damaged by a new feature.
2. User benefit. How much benefit will be gained by how many users from having this feature? This is next most important, as the program exists to provided benefits to its users.
3. Programming time. How difficult will it be to design, program and test? This is least important, and never determines whether a suggestion is adopted or not, but has to be taken into account for scheduling.
Priority of features
High priority A feature that will not cause other users problems, gives many users a strong benefit and will not take long to program will go high on the priority list. It might then be done in the next cycle, and after two to three months in test sites, go out to all users.
Medium priority. A feature that gives great benefit to a smaller number of users, or minor benefit to all users, is likely to get medium priority.
Lower priority A feature which has small benefit to only some users, or great benefit to only a very small number of users (in which case the report generator can often be used), and is not of interest to most users, will get lower priority.
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