CA is pleased to announce

Customer Enhancement Request Process Overview

Date: November 6, 2007

Recently, there have been significant changes to the enhancement request process for CA Service Support solutions, including Service Desk, Knowledge Tools, Dashboard, SupportBridge, and CA CMDB. The following details cover the steps to submit an enhancement request, as well as the process that occurs to review and provide feedback on that request.

Submitting an Enhancement Request

If you have an idea, or a business challenge, and you would like to submit it as an enhancement request, please open a normal technical support issue via SupportConnect.ca.com, or over the phone. Additionally, if you have an open support issue for a feature that is working as designed, this can also be submitted as an enhancement by asking the support technician to do so. Within CA enhancement requests are also referred to as Demand Analysis Requests, or DARs.

When submitting an enhancement request there are two critical details and one optional one that product management and development need when reviewing the request.

First, and most importantly, the business problem or business challenge you are experiencing today. For example, the enhancement request should attempt to address the following questions: What stress or manual processes is your organization facing? What business process cannot be mapped to the tool? What is the negative impact this is having on the business?

Second, why can you not achieve this with the technology you are using today?

Lastly, we welcome your suggested solution, but this is not required. We are more concerned with the challenge you have when addressing a business problem in your organization.

The Enhancement Request Evaluation Process

Once the request is received by CA, the technical support team will review the enhancement request to ensure this not a feature of an existing product. This is important to ensure that all customers are aware of different configuration options, or features in new versions. Assuming the request is still valid the support team will transfer it to a specific enhancement request queue. The enhancement request can be viewed through SupportConnect like any normal technical support issue.

Enhancement requests in the queue are reviewed on a monthly basis by a cross-functional team made up of members from Product Management, Development, Quality Assurance, Support, SWAT, and CA Services. Enhancement requests are evaluated based on several factors; for example: the impact on the over-all customer base; alignment to CA's strategic direction for the product set; potential adverse effect on system usability and performance. Finally, the enhancement request is evaluated by determining if it can be resolved with a product that will be delivered within 18 months. Based on this criterion, the enhancement request is assigned one of the following common statuses:

• Included in an Existing Release - This status is for an enhancement request that already exists in a release. This status often occurs when a customer is not on the latest release and is not aware of new features.
  
  
• Targeted for a Specific Release - This status states that the request has been accepted and is planned for a release that can be delivered within 18 months.
  
  
• Rejected - The rejected status is for requests that CA does not believe are strategic for the larger customer community, or could significantly impact performance or usability of the product for customers.
  
  
• Rejected and Added to the Wish List - An enhancement request that is a good idea but cannot be delivered in the required time frame will be put in this status. All enhancement requests put on the Wish List are then consolidated and given to the Service Support Product Line Community (PLC). Each item on the Wish List contains an id number, title, summary and a list of all the related enhancement request issues numbers. The PLC has several weeks to review and discuss this list before online prioritization takes place. Once prioritization is complete, CA Product Management utilizes this list when planning future product releases. Membership in the PLC is open to all customers who are active on maintenance for a product in the community. Currently the Service Support PLC focuses on Unicenter Service Desk, Unicenter Service Desk Knowledge Tools, Unicenter Service Desk Dashboard, CA SupportBridge and CA CMDB. For more information on the PLC including registration details, please access causergroups.com.

You should expect to receive feedback on your request within 60 business days of when the enhancement request is transferred to the enhancement request queue. This response time is due to the amount of discussion and analysis that is done by the cross functional team, as well as the large number of requests that the Service Support products receive from customers. If you do not receive a timely response, please update the issue via SupportConnect, or contact your account team.

Please note: The last Service Support PLC enhancement review and prioritization process took place in July 2007 and the results were communicated in September 2007. The Wish List and results are available on the PLC web site at www.causergroups.com.