Misunderstanding developer previews versus release candidates

[Kevin Miller]

Our release process is simple and pragmatic.

The main difference between DP and RC is that by-en-large DPs are not
feature complete, RCs are. As such DPs may have half finished features or
have several features planned in the cycle missing. We are very reluctant
to add features to RCs and will do so only if it is a minor addition of
something low risk but very high value or urgent. Clearly a release that
is not feature complete (DP) is not going to be released. An RC is turned
into a release when the number of bugs reported against its falls below
the level required by internal criteria.

There is no reason that there should be more or less of one or the other.
We could have one DP to get all the features in a given version we plan
then take some considerable time to get it stable. The number of each is a
function of how many features we need to add or how many bug reports we
get back (and various new criteria that are being created as we add to the
breadth of tests in our new internal automated test framework). Larger
point release upgrades are far more likely to have more of one or both DP
and RC.

The purpose of having two cycles going at once is in direct response to
customer demand! It is an innovation, a benefit created by our increased
engineering capacity. Those commercial customers with complex shipping
software are slower typically to jump from a 6.1 to a 6.5 or a 7,
preferring to align such a shift with a new project or major upgrade of
their own software. Creating an additional release with bug fixes in it
helps us serve those needs better. History suggests that a x.x.x release
will take far fewer RCs than a x.x release so the chances are that this
will allow us to bring those fixes out faster.

We have a lot of releases coming up over the next few months, the natural
result of all the re-architecting we've been doing. Hopefully the
explanation above helps to straighten things out as we enter this busy
period.

Kind regards,

Kevin

Kevin Miller ~ kevin at runrev.com ~ http://www.runrev.com/
LiveCode: Everyone can code




On 04/11/2013 03:32, "Richard Gaskin" <ambassador at fourthworld.com> wrote:

>Version numbers are communicative learning tools for developers and
>testers alike.
>
>When a company finds itself with more RCs than DPs, clearly they've
>become too optimistic and should anticipate lengthening the DP series in
>the next round.
>
>And any time a company finds itself with two different versions both in
>RC at the same time, a certain cool-headed control of the process has
>been lost and it's time to adjust expectations on at least one of those
>tracks.
>
>If designations like "RC" and "DP" are used interchangeably, we create a
>world in which words have no meaning, and the value we might otherwise
>enjoy from clear communication becomes unnecessarily lost.
>
>-- 
>  Richard Gaskin
>  Fourth World Systems
>  Software Design and Development for Desktop, Mobile, and Web
>  ____________________________________________________________
>  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com        http://www.FourthWorld.com
>
>
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