Release early, Release often

"Release Early, Release often and Listen to your customers" is a software product release philosophy that emphasizes that you release your product frequently and use the feedback from customers to enhance your product. This phrase was used in a paper by Eric Raymond in the paper "Cathedral and the Bazaar" in which he studies the evolution of Linux. Not sure if it was he who coined the term or if it always existed.


It's also called the train model or some thing of that sort. If a customer wanted a version of a product and could not take it, he could always take the next one without having to wait too long. There is a phrase to describe it, don't quite know what that is right now.

I have seen this philosophy being adopted very closely and the subsequent changes in the evolution of a product. Don't quite know who initiated it, but thumbs up to the guys. It's worked quite well I'd say, but of course it has it has it's cons.

My first assignment on strategy focused on this philosophy. In my paper, I've explored the advantages and disadvantages of moving to a frequent time paced cycle. Here is a quick summary of some of the concepts I explored in the essay.

1> Time pacing - Release as per the calender. Stick to fixed dates or months. For example: Release every quarter or release every year.

2> Release early = Increasing speed or increasing time to market

3> Cash flows - Release often to improve sales and hence improve your cash flows.

4> Pioneer-Follower -  Follow a competitor in a market but focus on introducing new features to lead the market. Build a quick prototype to follow a customer in the market. As a pioneer, introduce a new feature, get quick feedback and enhance to lead the market.

5>  Cost - Does speed increase or decrease cost of your product?

6> Economies of scale - The impact of speed on scale economies. For ex: Splitting a piece of work in to two releases to suit your release cycle may not make any sense!

7> Economies of scope - Lets say you manufactured paper and pen. Can you re-use Marketing/HR/Supply chain if you released both together at the same time??

8> Industry clock speed - What's the speed of product releases for that market. For example micro processors industry has a different clock speed compared to a web page.

9> Listen to your customer - Is your customer ok to upgrade if you have a slightly better version in 3 months? I don't know, but I'd be inclined to say no. Who would want the hassle of upgrading for some small changes and re-learn the product and discover more bugs!! Might as well wait for something substantial.

The last point was my conclusion and recommendation to the business as well. Listen to the customer and decrease speed. I promise to expand and write a little more on my understanding of these concepts in future blog posts.