How we have found the right balance at Leon

From the very beginning of Leon Software in 2007, we have been evolving many times, which has given us a great understanding of our market. My personal experience in aviation originated from OPS/Crew perspective since I have been a dispatcher and a pilot, while other areas of expertise came as a result of the collective feedback from our customers. One of my key responsibilities at Leon Software is the Product Owner role and I would like to give you some insight from that point of view.

Let me use an analogy to Formula One racing. In order to have a business lasting for more than 10 years, it needs to go to the pit stop to change tires. Of course - sales is important, marketing is important, but in the long run - if F1 car is getting behind in the technology race, it will eventually lose. When building the software, even with the modern technology, technical debt is inevitable. Bigger or smaller, it will enlarge over time because of business requirements for the application changes and technology being replaced by newer and faster solutions. A company simply needs to pay this debt and upgrade its vehicle to keep up with the pace.

On the other hand, customers generally do not like when the company is pit stopping. Making lots of changes may slow down the application, which is not necessarily an outcome customers expect. Nobody likes changes, especially if customers are used to the previous interface or to the previous ways of doing things. As a customer, I don't like it either, but this is the cost of progress and finding the right balance between customer patience and speed of F1 car is the key.

On top of that, market expects the delivery of new features to the application, making it more user friendly and capable of being more and more useful in day-to-day tasks. We have the roadmap to follow but at the same time lots of feedback and suggestions from customers. It is impossible to satisfy all expectations as often some of them are in opposition to others. Some believe that it might be tempting to promise everything the customer wants just to sell but we would never do it. I believe it is better to say "No" and not sell the software than to say "Yes", sell it and then fail to deliver.

So how have we found this balance? First of all, we have delivered lots of features, which allow customers to customize Leon by themselves without custom development required from our side. You can read more about this in our CTO's article. Secondly, we prioritize custom requirements using the voting portal, on which our customers can select the most required features. We pick one item from the top and include it in our development. Once it is done, we move on to the next one.

I also share our product backlog with our CTO so that we can be sure that technical debt is under control. Every day I consult more complicated issues with our Support team in order to be up to date about general customers feedback and requirements. Having this knowledge allows us to make better decisions about priorities for our software.

Our "F1 car" has just left the pit stop!

Leon is already 12 years on the market but our ambition to be a strong leader in the industry has remained the same. We have been pit stopping for quite a while recently - unfortunately, this is not a real F1 race and pit stop takes more than a few seconds. In order to have a really good vehicle, we had to upgrade some components. Technology changed a lot during that time and lots of improvements in IT were introduced.

I would like to thank all our customers for patience and understanding. You can now expect faster software improvements in new areas rather than changes in existing modules. We have also improved the way software is being updated to make it more smooth for end users.

Our car is accelerating now and we have new tires!

Don’t forget to visit our Community, where our developers consult feature suggestions with you and share their know-how on the latest updates.