Software philosophy: Release early, release often vs polished releases (blog.mugunthkumar.com)

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I think release early, release often works well in some cases, especially for pre-release software. If you're working on the initial versions of something, that quick iterative process is key. Once you've released, however, you have an obligation to your users, so it becomes less of a valid mantra.

I expected this article to just recover some old material, but it actually raises some interesting points.

In particular, working on games, I believe (like with films), I don't think "release early, release often" is a good idea.

It might work with massive multiplayer games, where users tend to keep re-exploring the same content, but in general with games once someone has played a game once they don't tend to want to play it again.

I tried "release early, release often" with an iPhone game I wrote, and it was a mistake. The biggest problem is that users get angry if you take away, or significantly change, content from users. That's reasonable, but it means once you have added a level it is hard to take it away, even if you have a new, better level to replace it with.

Expectations from software are lower than other products like cars, televisions. A car breaking down in the middle of a drive to work is far more "severe" an incident than Internet Explorer hanging and crashing. Further, software engineering as a field is very very young, with a far lower barrier to entry, resulting in products and processes which are much less evolved and mature compared to other industries. I think these are important factors why software tends to have lower quality bars than cars or physical products.

Very interesting article. Well done sir!

Releasing well-polished version of products makes sense most of the time. With all due respect to movie directors, engineers, software developers and game designers you _mostly_ know how to do a movie, a car, an MP3 player, or yet another take on video editing program.

Sometimes, however, things are so new that the only way to get to the good result fast (or, to get to the good result at all) you need to release early, release often. Lotus 1-2-3 was such a huge improvement over paper sheets and such a new idea that it totally warranted "release early, release often" mantra.

The software successes I see in the App Store take a two-pronged approach: launch with a polished 1.0, but then iterate quickly with similarly well-built .1s, .2s, etc. The upside of releasing multiple updates after a good 1.0 is out the door (on the App Store at least) is that your app shows up more frequently in the App Store Updates area so if people haven't used your app in awhile, they may be incensed to give it another try. A downside of releasing too often is that all the great reviews you got for the 1.0 will be gone once enough reviews for 1.1 are in. If all you did was drop a bugfix into 1.1, you may not receive as many glowing reviews and your overall app rating will drop. This really sucks, but it's a reality of the ecosystem.

The Release Early/Often example describes a situation of releasing a product that does not have all the features of its competitors: "The Windows Operating System, in the initial version (1.0) did not support overlapping windows which was a breakthrough feature on the then contemporary Macintosh."

Identically, the Polished Release example also describes a situation of releasing a product that does not have all the features of its competitors: The first version of iOS "(then called as iPhone OS), did not even have MMS"

Seems like the author didn't pick a great example to demonstrate a Polished Release.

Another week, another false dichotomy article on HN.

If there's an inverse correlation between the speed of deployment and the quality of your software, you're doing it wrong.

The Continuous Delivery philosophy is borrowed from Lean Manufacturing, and a fundamental tenet of that movement is "Build Quality In." In fact Lean is nearly synonymous with TQM, or Total Quality Management. If you've separated the two, then you've missed the entire point.

This tenet is carried over into the software world by Martin Fowler in his book Continuous Delivery, as well as all of the major advocates of lean software processes, for instance David Anderson and the Poppendiecks in their highly influential series of books on Lean Software.

Essential to a successful continuous deployment process is unit testing, continuous integration and built-in testing processes all along the way to feature deployment. These should be focused on quality all along the way: that's the point of continuous deployment, to allow for focused feature development that is highly tested and can be released with higher confidence than the old method of multiple feature release, which are heavy, harder to test and have more integration concerns.

The point of fast releases should never be to allow for "shitty software," but rather to deliver features that users can enjoy as soon as possible, create a process where deployments become highly automated, low-risk events, and gather feedback early and often on the experience of users with finished polished features so that effective product evaluation is happening constantly and the company can adapt quicker to new data and new trends.

A quick perusal of even the first chapter of any of the major volumes on Continuous Delivery should clear this up:

http://martinfowler.com/snips/201006021426.html http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Software-Development-Agile-Toolki...

http://www.amazon.com/Implementing-Lean-Software-Development...

And there's a fantastic presentation by David Anderson on Kanban on InfoQ, which nicely illustrates why quality is one of the major reasons you should consider a rapid release process like Kanban:

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/kanban-for-software