Publishing release dates

(Anthony) #1

The last few weekly newsletters from the labs have listed several great new features planned for release 5.1.0.0, but the release dates site gives no indication when that release might be available - even though the blurb at the top of that page still reads "Outlined below are the release dates for both previous and upcoming versions of Squiz Matrix" the actual table only shows past releases.

 

Back in Newsletter #473 it was stated:  "As of Matrix 5, we will no longer be releasing versions on a set scheduled basis, instead moving to a more ad hoc release system, with new versions released as they are warranted."

 

I dont have a problem with the general idea of being more flexible, I can see a lot of benefits to that. But I do think its important to give people some advance indication as to when the next major/minor increment is due. If I see some new functionality that would benefit my site, I need to know whether its worth waiting for that to feed through into a release or whether to code up my requirement some other way. Also for budgeting and planning the resource for doing and testing upgrades.  

 

I'm not asking for anything like the sort of tablets of stone schedule that we had before. And I dont think we need to know anything for the patch releases. But an indication (published on the formal release page) like "Release x.x will be entering testing during August and we currently anticipate a release in early September" would - to me at least - be hugely helpful.

 

Thoughts / comments?

(Bart Banda) #2

Hi Anthony,

we haven't set any dates for the release date yet as we are still finalising which features we want to include in 5.1. We are however looking at sometime at the start of September for the release date.

We will hopefully be able to publish an official release date on the blog sometime within the next couple of weeks. 

Hope that helps.

(Anthony) #3

Hi Bart,

 

For this release that is certainly helpful (and it seems my random guess of September which was only for illustration was a good one  :) )

 

But I guess my query is more about long term planning... it sounds like you plan to announce the 5.1 release around 6 weeks before it is available. If that's always going to be the case then we can plan on the basis that "if it hasnt been announed yet then its at least 6 weeks away". Which would address the "shall I wait for this new feature or work around it another way" dilemma. But that doesnt really help with my "when shall I allocate some time and resource to test / implement an upgrade".

 

Theres no right or wrong answer here really. I totally understand the idea of being flexible and holding out to get as much cool stuff in each release as possible. But that flexibiltiy comes at the price of less certainty for users as to when they should be planning upgrades. Maybe one approach would be for Squiz to say something like "we'll definitely do a minor release at least once every six months but if we have enough cool stuff ready to warrant it then we'll do one sooner" (replace six with whatever seems reasonable!). At leat that way we have something to plan around. 

 

Its early days for the new approach so right now I'm happy to just wait and see how it goes. But I'm interested to hear other folks chip in on how they decide when to schedule upgrades etc. Do people try and plan in advance, or do you wait for something to release and then think about scheduling your upgrade? Do people tend to take minor releases as soon as they come out or do you wait for the first patch to make sure its stable?

 

Anyways, thanks Bart for your input.

(Bart Banda) #4

Hi Anthony,

I understand that it helps a lot with knowing release dates for major versions so that you can plan ahead. And it's like you say, it's early days in the new release method, so we'll get better at estimating time frames and dates as time goes on. I can say with confidence that we'll definitely do a Minor release at least once every 6 months, and at max 4 times per yer, but more likely 3 times a year as a safe average. So once every 4 months is probably the best estimation we can give right now, which is the pace we are going with at the moment. 

We'll obviously keep everyone as updated as possible going forwards and hopefully we'll be able to announce release dates a lot earlier in the future.

 

Cheers

(Bart Banda) #5

http://forums.squizsuite.net/index.php?showtopic=12435