Hi team
re the news about the changing the deployment model:
I presume this means that there will now be version 11 and version 12 releases of the current generation?
And there will be scope for more enhancements in those interim releases than there otherwise would have been?
Ken
We've actually always planned to have some type of v11 and v12. The question is the scope of those releases--how much is just maintenance (bug fixes, etc.) and how much is new functionality. As you say, prior to our change in plans most (if not all) of that new scope would have been Next Generation changes.
Now we potentially have the ability to add new features to upcoming releases. However, this is tempered by two things. First, we still have the same staff and nearly the same amount of work to do on Next Generation so there isn't a large pool of available development hours. Second (and more importantly) we don't want to make the current application a moving target in terms of Next Generation development. So any new features added to the current application are likely to be things we're working on or investigating for Next Generation. Both of these reasons also factored into our decision to put the enhancement process on hold.
I'm sure that you'll hear more about this at the conference and in future postings.
--chuck
Thanks Chuck
That's pretty much how I thought it would play out.
It also affects our decisions about how much customisation work is worth doing in specific areas, how deeply we need to think about enhancements that might be worth asking for, etc - so it's good to have a clear idea of the plans.
I'm looking forward to the webinar next week to find out some more about how it's going.....
Hi Chuck,
I enjoyed the Next Gen webinar, it was quite illuminating, thank you. There was talk of the 'Scaffolding' which would have supported the integration between the current Gen & Next Gen no longer being worked on. Does this mean that some resources will be freed up and we could potentially see some of the modules appearing ahead of time? Or would you re-deploy those resources to work on bugs/new features in the interrim releases? It did sound like there would be quite a difference in the amount of effort now required, to that which had be assumed previously.
Thanks, Debs
While it's possible that that this change in plans might free up some resources, it's unlikely that it will have a great impact. We still have to replace the "scaffolding" with well crafted data conversion routines and an interface layer to the existing web API. So while our shift in strategy has lowered some of the technical complexity of the work, it has not really affected the volume of work. (Although I wish that were the case!)