Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/05/14
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Updating firmware on a camera should a relatively painless operation for the camera owner. In these types of cases (minus the degenerate ones of really horrible, non-functional SW), a steady clip of upgrades that fixes some bugs while adding new features actually can engage your customer base. Many users will be happy to get a steady stream of "free new value" from the software provider. Upgrading an SAP installation every 2 months, OTOH, would be an IT director's nightmare :-) For some reason, I don't picture Leica's software folks engaging in some kind of techno masturbatory activities. Slipping on ship dates on a product already a little late to market doesn't win anyone any brownie points or free up any Saturday's for leisure time activities. I would suspect rather that either (1) there's some kind of real problems with development discovered during integration (not a first class software team, in this case) or (2) some pukes insisted at the last minute on cramming some new features into some software that was otherwise on schedule (happens all the time) and that this really screwed the pooch (bad risk management in this case). Scott Frank Filippone wrote: >I was one of those non-SW types that was in management. The engineers that >worked in my company would hem and haw over releases, dates, quality, etc. >All good things to worry about. It was my job to set release dates, and >organize the engineers to think about marketing issues rather than >perfection of code. In the end, we established dates for release in >advance. They did not change for initial release. Sometimes features were >removed to meet dates, but the date was inviolate. A second date was the >first update to the initial release ( V1.1). The date for this was 30 days >after the initial release. It also was inviolate. Sounds rough? Not >really. Initial release meets market needs dates. You have competitors, >If you do not release to schedule, you lose what is essentially the entire >market for that customer. V1.1 allows some time to make the always >necessary bug fixes, and so that the customer base understood that you were >committed to fixing and adding features that they had need for. It actually >worked pretty well. ( I should add that this was for PC code, and >especially for Video drivers in a PC. Not exactly bank account accounting >SW. It was mission critical, but not life or business threatening.) > >The idea of counting the number of releases sounds gameable to me..... If >you want to improve, you just release less number of releases, more farther >spread out in time. > >Frank Filippone >red735i@earthlink.net > > > >_______________________________________________ >Leica Users Group. >See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information > >