[IxDA Discuss] the release cycle
Hi everyone, This question is a little outside the scope of IxD but is closely related to one of our goals: getting our work in front of real people. What I'm interested to know is - in the web world, how do your companies approach new releases? How much time is spent on QA, and how often do you release improved versions of your product - be it fixes, or new features? What's your release criteria? I know this tends to be different for different types of companies... but would love to hear what works for you. Loredana Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] the release cycle
we're on a 2 week release cycle - with alternating hot and cold releases. hot releases are for complex new features or enhancements. cold releases are for minor features or enhancements. bug fixes occur regardless of release. QA occurs in parallel with the release cycle. issues are tracked and literally tested individually and closed out or kicked back to developers according to FIFO priority. issues that touch many areas or need lots of testing are tackled first. we, of course, have separate dev, stage and production environments with sandboxes to prevent hosing anything important and items are promoted to different environments only after they are verified to work. our particular product and business changes constantly so we release a new product version every 2 weeks. some releases are more dramatic than others. the release criteria is determined on business need - most of them i prioritize and personally define. we keep a running log of all possible features and dole out a certain amount each release based on their relative necessity and difficulty to implement - usually 30-40 and leave room for bugs. items closed range from 54-90 per release and can be anything from fixing typos to building major admin tools. i plan everything for the next release, including detailed functional specs usually 1-2 weeks prior of the item's projected release. this way, i'm on schedule, if not ahead with funneling items to our dev team. has it worked? for the most part yes. we've done 21 releases this way (though hot and cold are relatively new) and we've missed the release schedule only twice. On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 1:52 PM, Loredana Crisan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi everyone, This question is a little outside the scope of IxD but is closely related to one of our goals: getting our work in front of real people. What I'm interested to know is - in the web world, how do your companies approach new releases? How much time is spent on QA, and how often do you release improved versions of your product - be it fixes, or new features? What's your release criteria? I know this tends to be different for different types of companies... but would love to hear what works for you. Loredana Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help -- -- www.flyingyogi.com -- Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] the release cycle
Hi Dave, We're building a cross-platform application that allows you to build a smart podcast playlist (self-updating) and listen to it either on our site, or over the voice channel of your mobile phone. We build in weekly iterations, but find that even very small fixes, such as changes the size of our podcast thumbnails get pushed off for weeks because of a rigid QA release cycle. What we're building is pretty new - to us and the public - so we need to be able to respond really fast to feedback from our users. Unfortunately right now we can't, and bug fixes get mixed up with new features, creating this soup of releasable items in QA land. I've seen other start-up companies build things and release them the same day... so I wonder where the best (or just better) solution lies. Loredana On May 1, 2008, at 12:14 PM, Dave Meeker wrote: loredana, That's an interesting question. I think the answer is much harder than you'd think. It really depends on the approach a team takes towards a project, what the client goals are in terms of getting to market, and what the specific project entails. I see a lot of teams working in a very iterative manner these days and doing so removes the waterfall/linear design --develop--test--deploy process, replacing it for something that is more circular, requiring involvement of all parties throughout the project. If you could give the list more info on what type of thing you are building, it might be helpful and allow folks to give you a better response. On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 12:52 PM, Loredana Crisan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi everyone, This question is a little outside the scope of IxD but is closely related to one of our goals: getting our work in front of real people. What I'm interested to know is - in the web world, how do your companies approach new releases? How much time is spent on QA, and how often do you release improved versions of your product - be it fixes, or new features? What's your release criteria? I know this tends to be different for different types of companies... but would love to hear what works for you. Loredana Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help -- Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction. -- Albert Einstein Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
