Category: 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.