This morning the ‘key release dates’ for the remainder of the 2008 arrived in my inbox this morning. This got a chuckle out of me for a variety of reasons, but at the same time the following thought crystalized: Are pre-defined release dates bad for Quality?.

With a bit of prompting by the other Adam in Toronto who tests here are some points to back up this position:

  • leads to release date backwards schedule planning (test invariably gets squished)
  • assumes only the happy path through the schedule
  • no room for learning about the feature
  • how do you calculate effeciency improvements based on familiarization?
  • creates artifical internal timelines (what if uat only takes 3 weeks, but we have 5 on the schedule)
  • leads to monolithic thinking (we dont need to have a working build for 3 weeks yet according tot he schedule)
  • rather than having the product dictate where we should test (bug clusters, code churn, technological risk, etc) often will concentrate on things that will achieve the schedule — which might not be the same as effective or appropriate test selection

Now, I know there are lots of things to coordinate around a release and that having a pre-defined date helps coordinate and plan those things. I’m just throwing the idea out before I lose it.