+10000000 :)

+1

+1

Releasing early and often works for Jetbrain, but will never work for all software.  You didn't even remotely consider:

1) Regulated industries where you need to submit your product a regulator board every release (which can cost tens of thousands of dollars per submission).

2) Software that is critical to someone's welfare, for example medical equipment or financial systems where "Ooops, turns out there's a bug, sorry for killing you/the loss of our house" just doesn't cut it.

3) Software in a already tighly contested market space, releasing a buggy POS is only going to kill your reputation.

What works for Jetbrains, just doesn't work for everyone.

@Andrew - you would have thought 3 on your list would have stopped JetBrains according to you but it doesn't...

@Ackward Coder

I guess there a few ways to answer that, 1) did Jetbrains act this way all the time, or only once their products were accepted within the marketplace? 2) Is the marketplace that crowded with quality products?  That's an honest question, I don't really know.  Resharper is obviously the top...well whatever it is, IDE enchancer?  I haven't used their other products, but by all accounts they are top of the line.  Would a new company entering the same marketplace today be as successful following the same strategy, or would people just say "why use this new buggy thing when I can just use Jetbrains"?  I honestly don't know the answer to that one.

@Derik,

I guess it's all a matter of tastes, I look at your point about your company and I wonder what your clients think.  Do they like getting something fast and contributing to the effort to make a better product (and do they get a discount for basically bieng your QA department for doing so?), or do they think "Well of course we get it early because the product has so many bugs that WE are forced to find and document."?

I would hope that your company has a fairly high bar set for code quality anyways, so you probably aren't turning over completely obvious, simple to find bugs (of the "I try and add a customer and the app crashes" ilk), so really they're probably only finding the hard to replicate bugs at this point.

I just look at the places I've been a consultant at in the past, and if "release early, release often" was their mantra, a lot...and I mean a crap load...of horrible, bug ridden code would have been released.

@Derik,

Interesting, I guess I could see it that way, driving the development insures that they can get their little nuggets in there, or at least increase the chances.

But what about things like boxed software, something like a Turbo Tax, a Video Game, a POS system for a Beauty Salon, etc.  Those types of apps need to be near bullet proof before release, or you'll have a lot of angry customers on your hand.

Either way, it's an interesting stance on the topic.  I for one, work in an industry that is scenario 1) from my original comment, so it's a moot issue for me anyways.  My employeer spends almost 10 million a year getting software approved in various jurisdictions already, so submitting multiple times would bankrupt us.

@Derik,

As a matter of fact, we would have to pay.  Regulatory boards don't care if something if Alpha, Beta or Release, just that they are getting software that they must review and approve.  Granted, I believe this is unique to the industry I am in.

I'm not disagreeing with what you are saying, I just think it's not always possible.   I also think that if a company was to take this approach, they better be sure they have good people who aren't lazy.  As I said in a previous comment, I'm quite sure that developers in many of the places I'd worked at would use this style of development as an excuse to forgo any of their own testing and just shove it out the door.  But that'd really isn't a problem with the "Release early, release often" philisophy as much as it's a problem with those companies.

It's all dependent on the "How" you release often.  Are you

a) Code & Running

b) Planning iterations that are realistic to achieve and then releasing the alpha software

Makes a huge difference and the decision between success and failure for any business.  Far too many shops code & run thus producing trash and burning out their assets (employees).

I agree, it DOES take balls and good people,  both business and technology/engineering, to implement the discipline and instill processes that allow for frequent iterations of ALM/SDLC in the form of alpha, beta and release.  I also agree that there are exceptions, but for the most part ALL verticals  can/could be successful with frequent iterations of software and/or hardware. I've seen my share of projects fail under different verticals due to business not wanting to walk the walk, for various reasons but usually ego is always involved, and align with engineering to create a successful environment where frequent iterations could have been done. I love my ReSharper! :)