[maemo-developers] About release dates (was RE: maemo Bug Jar #7)

[From: quim.gil at nokia.com]

Hi,

> Am Donnerstag, 5. Juni 2008 schrieb josh.soref at nokia.com:
>> Frederic Crozat wrote:
>> > Remember that most people are not used to Nokia policy to embargo 
>> > any date (even estimate) regarding software (or hardware) release.

True. These people need to understand that Nokia is a company watched by
competitors, the media, shareholders... Device launches and software
releases have an impact in this context far beyond the software update
itself. This is why Nokia generally doesn't disclose release dates.

>>
>> For simplicity's sake, I don't know when Diablo will be released.
>
> Quality first! Releasing shouldn't _only_ be a management 
> decision. When the quality is as expected then the (scrum ?) 
> team should hand over the responsibility to the management. 
> They can then powerpoint the great event ;-) 

And this is what the maemo development team does.

To understand better what Josh is saying you need to know that there is
a gap of time between the moment the development team says 'this release
is ready' and the moment the image goes actually out. The public release
date is decided from a business and marketing perspective based on many
factors that go beyond the quality of the software.

> Personally I 
> consider fix release dates as contra productive. Quality it 
> the key to success.

There are lots of books about waterfall and agile development, and about
feature or timebox based development. In fact all combinations exist
i.e. agile + timebox.

Also, who said our release dates are so fixed? Remember how upset some
people were last year when I dared to give rough time estimations for
the Hacker Edition and the OS2008 releases, and at the end they came
later? Guess what was the role of quality in that.

However, "consider fix release dates as contra productive" is easier
said than done when you have factories, distribution channels, marketing
teams and more releases ongoing at different stages, all of them needing
to have a good coordination with you, while having to support also other
development projects running in parallel elsewhere.

--
Quim Gil
marketing manager, open source
maemo software @ Nokia