Posted on

3 Reasons You Should Talk About Release Schedules More Often

Release schedules drive many of the processes for IT teams. The problem is, business teams, don’t like release schedules. Maybe it’s because they don’t understand the need for the formal process or they feel release cycles slow down the delivery of new features and fixes. 

Whatever the reason, if you work as a developer or in DevOps, talking about release schedules with your business stakeholders is important.

Posted on

The Evolution of Java: Time-Based Release

The Java programming language celebrated its 25th anniversary in May 2020. It was initially developed at Sun Microsystems by a developer named James Gosling and first released in May 1995. Sun introduced the slogan “Write Once, Run Anywhere” to describe Java’s unique cross-platform capabilities.

Throughout its 25 year history, Java has been developed at an irregular pace. The release cadence of new versions has often been irregular and very long due to the delays in the development of large features in new releases. This also slowed down the innovation of language while other languages, with faster feedback periods, evolved.

Posted on

Baby Yoda and Stranger Things: The Case for Shorter Mainframe Software Release Cycles

Overview: Careful thought must be paid to how we want our users to consume our mainframe software updates. Releasing incrementally has definite advantages over big releases. Just look at how we consume popular TV shows.

BABY YODA! Now that I have your attention, let’s consider how Baby Yoda became a big thing over the last few months, growing with each new episode of Disney’s The Mandalorian. Baby Yoda was able to stay in our minds for the period that the episodes where dropped weekly. What Disney did here was smart: they put out incremental weekly releases of the show. This meant that we couldn’t binge; we had to watch each week and wait for more. We had time to think about and discuss each episode. Each episode could stand on its own and have a week to be dissected before the next was presented. It provides for a much longer period in front of the public.

Contrast that with a series that is dropped all on one day like Netflix’s Stranger Things. This produces a big buzz, but mostly for a few days until everyone has seen it. The interest does not last as long as if it were stretched out over several weeks. There isn’t the time to review and discuss each episode because you wait until everyone has caught up and then you can discuss the whole season.