Painless Releases

The pain of unique releases

The release process described in the Case Study: Waiting for Godotchapter, rivals that of NASA’s mission control. It starts in the afternoon and runs until the wee hours of the morning. In the early days, more than twenty people had active roles to play during the release. As we might imagine, any process involving that many people requires detailed planning and coordination. Because each release is arduous, they don’t do many a year. Because there are so few releases, each one tends to be unique. That uniqueness requires additional planning with each release, making the release a bit more painful, further discouraging ...