Releasing Often
Last week, when commenting on Symbian Signed, I mentioned that I release often. What does this mean? How do I release an incomplete application?
When planning development, I split the tasks into small related groups of functionality that take about a week. I then release what I have done so far every week. This allows my customer to see what I am doing that, in turn, allows them to…
- Share in decisions, problems and achievements
- Change the way I might have implemented something
- Assess if the project is going to plan
- Provide measurable activity against which payment can be made
- Help informally test what’s been done
- Provide early alpha and beta versions to their potential customers or partners
Releasing often focusses the mind and encourages the creation of code that’s release quality first time rather than relying on things to be deferred until later that sometimes never get done.
The alternative, releasing everything at the end is usually a recipe for disaster. It more often that not results in a discontinuity between customer and developer expectations.
Most of this won’t be new to you if you practice Extreme Programming.
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