Frequent Delivery

Software projects have gotten used to having releases delivered only once or twice a year. It's believed that this rate of release is necessary in order to provide a quality release. The users have also gotten used to this frequency of releases and try to stuff as many features as possible into their requests so they can get as much as they can out of each release.

If you are able to deliver more frequently, however, everything changes. By taking smaller chunks of functionality, the users will tend to pick the most important features to implement first. The releases are smaller and more manageable. The risk of failure is smaller on each release and if there is a serious problem, it can be fixed more quickly.

Fast releases only work well if you have automated regression tests that can quickly verify the functionality of the system. Otherwise, it may be too risky to release quickly without extensive manual testing of the entire system.

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