You may not be aware of this, but we release new software a lot. By a lot, I mean often - every week.
How do we manage this? We use "Scrum". It's a method of project management that keeps us on track very, very tightly. It's a little bit nonstandard here in that we actually have two overlapping cycles going on at once. We have a one week tactical sprint that we use for bug fixes and minor enhancements, and we have a four week strategic cycle for larger enhancements.
This lets us get things done really, really quickly. We are never far off track.
It's like driving a car. You don't drive a car by just pointing it at your destination and letting go of the steering wheel - there are lots of little course corrections that take place en route.
We're tracking all these changes with product backlogs and Trac, and we have an internal preview to let people know what's coming.
What does this mean to you, outside of Compendium? It means that we are not sitting on our laurels, having already built a great product. Instead, we're improving it all the time. Sometimes the changes are invisible to you, but the system is more robust, faster, more maintainable. Other times it's relevant to our customers, like when our templating system improves and CSS becomes drastically simpler. To our readers, content might become more accessible or more easily found via search engines.
To me, though, it means I'm in a team of professionals who really know and love our craft, and I think that's awesome.
How do we manage this? We use "Scrum". It's a method of project management that keeps us on track very, very tightly. It's a little bit nonstandard here in that we actually have two overlapping cycles going on at once. We have a one week tactical sprint that we use for bug fixes and minor enhancements, and we have a four week strategic cycle for larger enhancements.
This lets us get things done really, really quickly. We are never far off track.
It's like driving a car. You don't drive a car by just pointing it at your destination and letting go of the steering wheel - there are lots of little course corrections that take place en route.
We're tracking all these changes with product backlogs and Trac, and we have an internal preview to let people know what's coming.
What does this mean to you, outside of Compendium? It means that we are not sitting on our laurels, having already built a great product. Instead, we're improving it all the time. Sometimes the changes are invisible to you, but the system is more robust, faster, more maintainable. Other times it's relevant to our customers, like when our templating system improves and CSS becomes drastically simpler. To our readers, content might become more accessible or more easily found via search engines.
To me, though, it means I'm in a team of professionals who really know and love our craft, and I think that's awesome.
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