Introduction
When you see a feature move from "Under Review" to "Planned," it’s an exciting moment. It means your voice was heard and your idea has been validated. However, "Planned" is the beginning of a marathon, not the final sprint.
The 5 Stages of Development
To ensure the stability of the platform you rely on every day, every new feature must pass through a rigorous lifecycle:
Deep Discovery & Design: Our product designers don't just add a button; they study how that button affects every other screen in the app. This phase involves wireframing, user experience (UX) testing, and ensuring the new feature meets our accessibility standards (so everyone can use it, regardless of ability).
Architectural Review: Before a single line of code is written, our senior engineers must determine how the feature interacts with our database. Will this slow down the app for other users? Does it create a security vulnerability? This "unseen" work is critical to keeping the platform fast and safe.
The Build Phase (Development): This is where the actual coding happens. Depending on the complexity, this can take anywhere from a single "sprint" (two weeks) to several months. During this time, the feature is built in a "Development Environment" that is completely separate from the one you use.
Quality Assurance (QA) & "Bug Hunting": Once built, the feature is handed to our QA team. They try to "break" it in every way possible. If they find a bug, it goes back to the developers. We refuse to release features that are "half-baked" or unstable.
Staged Rollout: We rarely flip a switch for 100% of users at once. We often start with a "Beta" group to gather real-world data. If everything looks good, we gradually roll it out to the entire community.
Why do timelines change?
Sometimes, a feature in the Testing phase reveals a fundamental flaw that requires us to go back to Design. While delays are frustrating, our priority will always be the integrity of your data and the performance of the system over meeting a specific calendar date.