Communication and work with community

[mazex]

Hi B6!

This may sound like I'm trying to come here and "know better" but as a development manager myself I'm a bit interested if you have considered a more agile approach to development? You of course know what I mean by that, but for the non-devs here I mean where you work with fixed iterations of for example three or four weeks. Everything that is developed and tested in a "sprint" (iteration) goes to production (in your case into the next patch). You go forward with continous integration of a working code base in small steps with regular feedback from the customers. As it is now the customers that don't visit this forum have not received any updates since last year which is kind of a problem?

So, in our team team at least we have had great success going from classic waterfall methodology to Scrum based development, we don't do games but very complex software... We pick a few tasks, focus on them with the whole team (architects, developers and testers together) and go all the way with them (done done as it's called). Only after they are done and accepted by the customers we focus on the next task. Working that way with complex code makes testing a lot easier too as there are not changes done in a lot of places that makes testing a pure he'll...

The developers like it a lot better as they have a few tasks that they can focus on together instead of a constant backlog that is being worked on by everyone at the same time for a long time. The ones that like it best are of course the testers that no longer have to sit waiting for weeks and then the whole system has changed in a zillion places... Or, wait - maybe it's the customers that like it best as they get regular updates?

There is a feeling at least that a lot of areas are being worked on right now simultaneously but few get done all the way?

I know comments like this are sensitive and invite to an answer like: "How we work internally is none of your friggin problem!" But I assure you It's written with good intentions...

/mazex