How to make license assigment easy to use when technology and resources are limited?

Question

I am building a portal for company users or single license users to manage their account for a 3D CAD application.

Due to low resources and lack of information on the project, the architecture was build in a way that we do not allow a a license to not be assigned, so whatever license exists it needs to be always assigned to a user.

If you have 150 licenses all licenses will be assigned to either account owner or member.

Every-time someone is unassigned, it becomes assigned to the owner automatically.

Preliminary testing with MVP:

• Confusion with the license cannot be disconnected from someone
• No indication that license is unassigned.
• It does not inform the administrator (account owner) that the license is free to be given to someone.
• When a team is big, it is even more confusing (I tested myself and I was lost).

Now, the second architecture solution would require significant change (higher dev costs):

To make able for a license to display as unassigned the license would have to be floating, so it still belongs to the company, so it is not used by anyone.

Major complications from this solution: the software uses a security dongle and has lots of security triggers that require the user to unlock (not just first-time run, but every 6 months and also with subscription renewal).

If the license is not assigned, that means the user will get another barrier that didn't exist before (worse experience) and will not be able to use the software he purchased, unless he/she assigns to himself. Including single license users who don't have a team, they will need to assign the license via a portal to allow themselves in order to use it, on top of activating it.

Answer 1

The question as stated has already been answered by the details you provided. Of course allowing unassigned licenses is better than the current system for the reasons you stated, not least of all because it was confusing even to you.

Given enough resources, it seems clear that your team would go with implementing the better license model. The real problem is deciding how to proceed when stuck between a rock and hard place - between delivering a confusing application or devoting already limited dev resources to improving the usability of something which is technically already functional. How to proceed is dependent on the true cost of the implementation of the more intuitive license system and the priorities of the team.

You mention the high dev cost of implementing the better solution, but it's important to compare these options based on their long-term cost. The immediate cost of keeping the current solution is 0 because this is already in place, but the long-term costs are significant. Before any users can actually start using your software, they have to get the licenses sorted out. If that initial interaction is a headache for them, then the rest of the software doesn't just need to be good, it needs to be so good that it redeems the terrible experience they started with. Additionally, you can expect to have to waste resources addressing support tickets which will come up from people not knowing what's going on with their licenses. The fact that it gets more confusing the bigger the team is is another big consideration. This means that the more valuable a client is (assuming a bigger team pays more overall for their licenses), the worse your experience is for them and the more likely you are to lose them.

A potential solution

I'm not sure if this is feasible given the security and account systems the software uses, but one solution might be to simply create a user called "Unassigned" which gets all the licenses not allocated to other users. While this is a bit of a hack, it could be an opportunity to provide a more intuitive experience without having to devote a huge chunk of time to implementing it.