Zephyr Enterprise Product Development Process and Roadmap
The intent for this page is to provide transparency into our roadmap process for Zephyr Enterprise, including when and how we address feature requests and enhancements, and when to expect fixes for bugs and defects.
Quick Links
Feature Requests and Roadmap
ZE Ideas Portal: https://zephyrenterprise.ideas.aha.io/ideas
Submit a new idea/feature request:
Via the Ideas Portal https://zephyrenterprise.ideas.aha.io/ideas/new
or via email to ideas-ZENT-smartbear-api@iad-prod1.mailer.aha.io where the subject is the title of the idea, and the body is the description
Release notes: Version History
Bugs and Defects
Please file a support ticket, and our support team will be happy to help: https://support.smartbear.com/zephyr-enterprise/message/
Our Product Development Process
This section explain how we prioritize and select feature requests and defects for development.
Release Cadence
Our release cadence for Zephyr Enterprise is:
Major Releases
New features and enhancements, and as many bugs/defects as possible
Cadence: Approximately every quarter
Minor Releases
Address critical bugs and defects that cannot wait until the major release
Cadence: Approximately every month
Patch Releases
Address blocker bugs with no workaround available
Cadence: As needed
Process for Bugs and Defects
For filing bugs and defects, please first file a ticket with our support team who will review the bug and file it internally for our development team: https://support.smartbear.com/zephyr-enterprise/message/
Process for Feature Requests and Enhancements
Filing and upvoting on feature requests
To upvote and file new feature requests, please visit our Ideas Portal: https://zephyrenterprise.ideas.aha.io/ideas
Feature requests and enhancements go through the following steps:
File: Customers file a new idea through our Ideas Portal
The idea remain private to the customer only and starts in the ‘Needs Review’ status
Review: The Product Team reviews the idea
If aligned with our product strategy, the idea is made public and goes into the ’Gathering Interest' status
If not aligned with our strategy, the idea goes into the ‘Not Aligned’ status and we provide an explanation
If the idea is a duplicate or is an existing feature, the idea goes into the ‘Already Exists’ status and we provide a link to the feature
Gather Interest: Ideas gather interest and votes from other customers
Other customers can comment and upvote ideas in the portal
Selecting features for each release
Planning kick-off: We kick off planning for new releases about 6 weeks ahead of development. We reach out to our customers and formally request to review and up-vote feature requests in our Ideas Portal.
Features selected for consideration: About 4 weeks ahead of development, the ZE Product Team selects a list of candidate features for the release. These features go into the ‘Considering for next release’ status.
Features committed for the release: About 2 weeks ahead of development, we select a final committed list of features for the release. The committed features go into the ‘In-progress for next release’ status, and the features that didn’t make it go back to the ‘Gathering interest’ status.
Development kick-off: During release development, no more features request are considered until the next cycle.
Release available: Once the release is available, the released features move into the ‘Shipped’ status
How we select features
Our new feature development bandwidth is made up from features in the following buckets:
Most voted features from our Ideas Portal
Features aligned to our roadmap themes: Automation, Reporting, and BDD support
Special needs of our customers
Timelines for Feature Selection
We are currently working on ZE 7.0, which targets March 31, 2021
The timelines for the next release are as follows:
Milestone 1: Mar 3 Kick-off planning and review feature requests from the Ideas Portal
Milestone 2: Apr 14 Draft scope for release 7.1
Milestone 3: May 5 Final scope for release 7.1 and kick off development
Milestone 4: EO Q2 Release 7.1 available for upgrade
Starting Release 8.2, Zephyr Enterprise documentation is moving from its current location on Atlassian to a dedicated, standalone Zephyr Enterprise Documentation page. https://support.smartbear.com/zephyr-enterprise/docs/en/welcome-to-zephyr-enterprise.html