My opinion as well is against Jude's proposal. Here are my reasons:
(a)
The schedule itself will help users simply nothing. Why?
Because they will not know which parts will be in it. During the review process
it can always happen that in the last minute a severe error in a part is discovered etc.,
so relying on that some parts will appear at some given point of time is simply impossible.
So that date not really makes sense for anyone. It would, if it would be clear which parts
would be contained in it, but then all this will become deadlined like a software company,
rushing out incomplete software at the deadline.
(b)
As already said, fixating a date would only make sense while at the same time fixating the set
of parts to work on for that release. And that would take all the freedom out of this project.
This project lives from the energy that people put into it voluntarily, and this implies some oddities,
especially: you never know when will be the next release. HOWEVER: please read on:
©
I myself am frustrated about the low rate of 1 release per year. I think we should simply
change this and create smaller releases, containing fewer parts, twice a year.
At best, this release could be automated in the way described by Jean-Philippe:
simply release all currently Admin-Certified parts at that point of time.
I always wondered why so much manual work is required for a release to be done by Chris.
Shouldn't we save him some time and automate that? If a part is Admin-certified,
it should be fine to go IMHO, no more manual work done. Maybe we should put some energy
into making this possible for Chris.
Let me add a last note: Jude, seeing your original post
http://forums.ldraw.org/showthread.php?tid=275
, I understand that you are in need of some parts.
But what I do not understand is how you decided to solve that problem:
I see a posting with an urgent request, and now this deadline suggestion.
This reminds me of the typical manager guy in a software company,
not wanting to fiddle with the details, but instead putting pressure on the engineers.
That's an Antipattern which I had the non-pleasure to observe several times already.
Why don't you gather some parts reviewing expertise and then become a parts author
yourself to help us reduce the amount of work to be done? This would have been my
natural reaction to your initial problem.
(a)
The schedule itself will help users simply nothing. Why?
Because they will not know which parts will be in it. During the review process
it can always happen that in the last minute a severe error in a part is discovered etc.,
so relying on that some parts will appear at some given point of time is simply impossible.
So that date not really makes sense for anyone. It would, if it would be clear which parts
would be contained in it, but then all this will become deadlined like a software company,
rushing out incomplete software at the deadline.
(b)
As already said, fixating a date would only make sense while at the same time fixating the set
of parts to work on for that release. And that would take all the freedom out of this project.
This project lives from the energy that people put into it voluntarily, and this implies some oddities,
especially: you never know when will be the next release. HOWEVER: please read on:
©
I myself am frustrated about the low rate of 1 release per year. I think we should simply
change this and create smaller releases, containing fewer parts, twice a year.
At best, this release could be automated in the way described by Jean-Philippe:
simply release all currently Admin-Certified parts at that point of time.
I always wondered why so much manual work is required for a release to be done by Chris.
Shouldn't we save him some time and automate that? If a part is Admin-certified,
it should be fine to go IMHO, no more manual work done. Maybe we should put some energy
into making this possible for Chris.
Let me add a last note: Jude, seeing your original post
http://forums.ldraw.org/showthread.php?tid=275
, I understand that you are in need of some parts.
But what I do not understand is how you decided to solve that problem:
I see a posting with an urgent request, and now this deadline suggestion.
This reminds me of the typical manager guy in a software company,
not wanting to fiddle with the details, but instead putting pressure on the engineers.
That's an Antipattern which I had the non-pleasure to observe several times already.
Why don't you gather some parts reviewing expertise and then become a parts author
yourself to help us reduce the amount of work to be done? This would have been my
natural reaction to your initial problem.