[IxDA Discuss] the release cycle

[Ari Feldman]

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 <loredana at lexy.com> 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
>
>
>
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