It's cooked when everyone says so

Some products allow for agile development where the code is actually released directly to customers at the end of each iteration.  So far, I have not been able to do this with products that are installed in enterprises and need testing on multiple platforms, upgrade validation, etc.  And most enterprises I've dealt with don't want new software installed on site every two weeks.

So while the development and QA teams are flying along churning out progresss and checking things on the white board, there comes a time when you need to decide if the software is ready to go to a customer.

My solution for this is a release checklist.  The idea is that each stakeholder has to agree that the release meets his or her needs.  Any person is free to say "No", and any "No" will veto the release.

The current release checklist for the enterprise product looks something like this:

• PM decisions - Release is feature complete, documentation is complete
• Dev mgr decisions - No showstopper issues, code has remained unmodified for long enough
• QA decision - release has had adequate regression testing
• Support decisions - internal "dogfood" testing successful, beta testing successful, support team has adequate training and info on the release
• Client services - advance customer notifications are complete, client services team has adequate training and info on the release
• Sales - advance channel notifications are complete, sales team has adequate training and info on the release
• Marketing - any required marketing / PR items are complete

The interesting thing about this approach is that it doesn't end up with everyone turning to QA and saying, "Can we ship it?".  Everyone has buy-in and visibility to the release decision without having a huge amount of bureaucracy.

The other cool thing is that one person signs off on each item.  So there's ownership at a detail level.

Lastly, it's nice to be able to run through this as the release is coming to a close and double-check with the smiley-face indicator to see if they both tell the same story.

So how does everyone else decide when their release is cooked and ready to be served?

Comments

[Stewart Rogers]

Great post! I just asked the same thing, although I put all the pressure on the QA Manager. Check out my latest post, "Complaints", on our blog, The Product Management View.

One question though, how many votes does it take to ship and can anyone override the decision of the group?