Feltan
Posts: 1160
Joined: 12/5/2006 From: Kansas Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins All of you who are disappointed, I have to say I think you'll be singing a different tune very soon. Gil's being understandably cautious about committing to a date, because of the tremendous number of new features and improvements in this release, which all need testing. However, we're doing our best to get this out ASAP and it's in the final iterations of polish and debugging now. Regards, - Erik Eric (and Gil), I appreciate the efforts. I have been watching this thread, as many appear to be doing as well, with a good deal of interest and anticipation. I won't berate you on the timeline issue. However, if I may, I really suggest a serious scrub of your Software Development Process and, perhaps, have some minimum expectations for the development companies whom you publish. I do software develpment management for a living, and have done so for over twenty years. Albeit, I am involved in business applications. However, my customers would have hung, drawn and quartered me if this situation existed in a business space. Here is a simple fix. You need to change and manage the expectations of your customers. Stop calling it a patch. In other development environments, there is a clear understanding of the semantics involved. A patch addresses defects. Only defects. A patch fixes broken software. A version release adds new features as well as defect fixes. You mix terms at your peril. You are developing and releasing a new version of the game. It requires the time and testing that you state is occuring. A patch, if that was what you were working on, should have been out the door within a couple of weeks -- max. I suspect the current effort started as a patch, and grew from there. It is interesting to note this, because the number one cause of failed software deliveries is scope/requirements growth. Someone, and I am not sure who, needed to exercise some technical leadership a while ago. Some stakes needed to be pounded into the ground within the development and publishing organizations. A patch (a real one) was probably warranted to fix some errors early on. The announcement of a new version release would have, could have, been a positive PR issue -- instead, you all are defending actions that should by all rights be feathers in your cap. Regards, Feltan
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