Friday, June 22, 2012

One of the issues of infrequent releases.....

It's been a month since our last deployment, and we've got two features that's have been sitting in code for longer than that, and one that's been recently developed. One feature is 'hidden', the other isn't functional yet (a couple of external dependencies).

There are a couple of problems here:

  • Not getting feedback on features that are ready to be released
  • Keeping the information in your brain so that you can fix any bugs that arise when the feature finally gets released
  • Trying to remember all the little bits that need to be completed to make the feature ready to release
A lot of this has to do with the flow of development, and perceived issues with releasing small features often. But the one that has kept on creeping up on me in the last couple of weeks is the realisation I want to keep adding new features, little ones that I think will make a difference, but aren't really necessary or proven to be required. 

This mentality comes from a "we're not going to be able to push anything new for another month", so try to pack everything in. It means that the code isn't as lean as it should be. Instead of waiting for feedback, reacting and pushing a new release, we just assume what people are after. 

Have you found this to be an issue when you're doing infrequent releases?

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