Just a quick post, we’re continuing on development of 3.8 and 4.0 respectively, so there will be a minor update to current Corporate/Enterprise in the next month. Version 4.0 is now funded 25%, and we continue to seek Inner Circle participants

We’re also about to release a new Tour page, this will include a lot of existing information from the Guide, as well as frequently asked functionality questions. This is all neatly sectioned and contained so it should be easier than ever to find answers to questions you have about Copper (and why its better than XYZ product!). We plan to add video how-to’s to this section over time.

However, we’re also on Tour during June! So if you’re in San Francisco, New York, or London, Travis and I will be visiting these cities between 6th-17th June, and if you’d like to meet up for lunch/dinner/drinks/coffee just get in touch! We think this is a great opportunity to put names to faces and just get amongst you guys while we’re in development mode.

Email me at ben@copperproject.com or Travis at travis@copperproject.com for more details.

– Ben Prendergast

– Ben Prendergast

This week we continue with design and development of the next version, and we’ve also started on a minor update for the current version.

However, a few opportunities have come up to simplify the next version by potentially removing features. Well, not so much removing features, rather removing redundancies that exist within the software.

So, we have a few questions that we wanted to throw out there to the customer base so that we can make better decisions about these key changes. We’re really looking for an economy of movement/function in this version.

So here are seven quick questions, you can reply via the comments here, or by emailing info@copperproject.com

1. How does your company use Files? Do you view the files tab in clients? Do you view it in Projects? Do you only upload files that relate to tasks?
2. How does your company use Contacts? Are you using the related contact feature in the task commentary?
3. Would you prefer the Project and Task % complete to be automatically based on hours Estimated vs Logged, or continue as a subjective % estimation on each update?
4. How many resources would you typically have on a task? and what’s your max resources on any task?
5. Do you have a single charge rate, charge rate for each client, charge rate for each role, charge rate for each user, or charge rate for each project?
6. Describe your ultimate report, think laterally, what would you most like to know about your business?
7. In general, what is the most time consuming thing you do with Copper? Don’t solve the problem with ‘it would be nice if’, rather, just tell us in words what you spend the most time doing.

Please shoot through your thoughts via email or by commenting on this post, it all helps. Version 4.0 is shaping up to be an amazing piece of software, we know you’re going to love it. And yes, if you’re keen on contributing or want an amazing discount there are still spots available in the Inner Circle.

Until next week.

– Ben Prendergast

Ok, last time I talked about our overarching requirements for the next version of Copper, here they are recapped:

1. We’re going to reduce pages/clicks by 40%
2. It needs to be something that I personally will use every single day
3. We’re going to add 100% of the features in our specification document

Simple, right? However where do you start? From the end, of course. We usually have a running document which outlines all of the features that customers want. It’s usually 20 pages in length, and the idea is that we work on adding the most popular features, within the context of our philosophy of building beautifully simple efficiency systems for creative teams.

The problem with this kind of specification process is that Customer A is often unaware that what they think is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL to their business is actually at odds with what Customer B is saying is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL to theirs. If I had a dollar for every time someone said we’d be ‘barking mad’ not to add feature ‘xyz’, I’d have around $12,803. Not much, but still a hefty amount of accused insanity.

So, internally I like to think about ‘Feature Fractals’. A feature fractal is this: Customer A/B/C all talk about a required function using different terminology, and in some cases even different requirements. While most developers would set about adding 10-15 new features, we like to use our experience and distill these requirements into a single feature that will suit the 80% majority.

In our v4.0 spec, we have around 10 phases of development, and roughly 168 new features planned, most of these based on this feature fractal thinking, based on 20 pages, six years of emails, survey responses, conversations, meetings, and gut instinct. There’s a lot in here, yet check out Requirement 1 above!

So far we have around 20% of this next build funded, so if you think your organization might be interested in coming on board to sponsor this latest development, we still have plenty of spots left and they represent amazing value, click here for more information.

For now though here are three untitled screens.

We’re probably 3 weeks on from when these are taken, but you can see that even before we start coding there is some serious consideration around the product. Next week I might provide a little more of a look at the early screens and/or spec, but the in-depth stuff I’ll be keeping for the inner circle.

Feel free to comment, cheer us on, or just tell us we’re mad not to add feature ‘xyz’ ($12,803 isn’t enough to retire on).

– Ben Prendergast