Should Companies Delay Products for More Features?

conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece looking at if it makes sense for companies such as Sony to delay the release of products to ensure that when they do come out they are absolutely top of the line. From the article: 'In the tech world, where consumer trends can rise and fall and product cycles are short, that's more often the exception than the rule. The penalty for a delay can be severe -- even catastrophic. One of the biggest risks in postponing a product launch is being out-hustled to market by rivals.'"

Comments

Is it soup yet?

[BWJones]

Should Companies Delay Products for More Features?

Companies should release products when they are *done*. This means that they define a set of parameters they want to meet and then complete them. Putting a product out in a date driven fashion is a sure fire way to release crap that you end up beta testing on your customers while trying to add in new features/technology results in version creep. Want to please your customers and get them to come back for your other products? Release a product when it is done and if you want to introduce new features, that is an incremental release.

*Disclaimer: This only works if you do not have a monopoly... :-)

Re:Is it soup yet?

[Mazda6s]

But to start a project without any notion of a deadline is a sure fire way to never release anything. I believe that projects like this require a "happy medium".

Come up with a list of features to implement, estimate those features (and those features only), design, implement, test, release with re-assessments (and iterations) happening throughout the entire life-cycle of the project, adjusting estimates as necessary.

At some point the companies need to publish a release date to the public. That should be somewhere near the end of the project, assuming the re-assessments warrant it.

Do NOT allow new features. Period.

Re:Is it soup yet?

[hotdiggitydawg]

...and in the meantime your competitors have released slightly inferior products much earlier and captured your market share. Then they've used the funds from their initial sales to boost their resources, and started working on the next generation of your product before you've even finished the current one.

From a customer's point of view, your comments hold water. From a shareholder's point of view they don't. Guess which group of people companies care more about?

Re:Is it soup yet?

[AKAImBatman]

But to start a project without any notion of a deadline is a sure fire way to never release anything.

I understand his point to be that a goal with a reasonably projected timeframe needs to be set, then met. Forcing a deadline will only result in half-finish crud going out the door.

To use the aforementioned DNF reference, Id Software releases games when they are Done(TM). Yet they still manage to release them while 3D Realms has gone over a decade without a release. Why the difference?

The answer is in setting goals. Id Software sets goals they want to achieve, then they achieve them. 3D Realms keeps moving the bar (Quake -> Quake II -> Unreal -> Unreal 2.0, etc.), ensuring that they'll never manage to meet their goals. Thus "when its done" means "when we get tired of moving the bar."

Like every thing else in life

[Lord Duran]

You just have to find the right balance.

It's a fine line

[teklob]

There is no correct answer to this question. If you put out a crappy product ahead of the competition, nobody will use it - look at the hordes of expansion packs that are released for every successful game. If you wait too long, everyone will have settled for what was available. The bottom line is that companies need to schedule a release date and meet it. If they can't get the product out the door with the original quality on the original timeline, somebody is not doing his job and the marketplace will reflect that.

Competition?

[lymond01]

One of the biggest risks in postponing a product launch is being out-hustled to market by rivals.

In an industry where there is no originality, only evolution, having your competitor's product out before yours doesn't mean much. People will buy yours if it's better or has features they want. If you're making another XBox 360 but calling it Joe 180, it's your own fault. I for one wouldn't mind things slowing down some, more in software than hardware. Pay programmers not for the final product (or the nth iteration of the product), but for their work on it. Windows' backward compatibility and long next-version-time-to-market is probably the best thing going. Better than having to try to make your product for a particular version of Linux and then right 20 pages of documentation detailing how to get it to work with another version.

Tech's New Headache: Feature Creep

[crowtc]

I don't see how this is truely a new problem. Feature creep has plagued the software development industry for decades. Considering that everyone wants thier new toaster to properly toast bread, bagels and muffins, the next logical step is of course: how can you bake cookies with it?

It's the marketing zombies that keep trying to one-up each other adding features and screwing up us programmers. There must be a limit placed on the madness. Get the thing working NOW, then worry about what you *can* do with it later.

Too late

[Eric Bishop]

If you're asking yourself at the end of the development cycle if you really need some features, why have they survived the design phase?

Re:No

[tktk]

QA and debugging will never be done. There will always be some bugs.

Companies deal with the bugs that will affect a lot of users and ignore the bugs that will affect only 12 people. But the trick is telling between the two.

No, crank it out asafp please!

[pair-a-noyd]

I wait until stuff is obsolete to get it.
Really.

You can get obsolete stuff (anything more than a year old now) for rock bottom prices and often you can pick it up off of trash piles for free.

I grabbed a really nice mf printer/scanner/copier off a trash pile the other day that works great, they even put the manuals inside. It was clean and in perfect working order. I guess they had to have the bleeding edge product of the week.
Works for me..

You can't imagine how much cool stuff I get out of trash piles and how much money I save. I wasn't born with the "trendy gene"..

Re:No, crank it out asafp please!

[plusser]

You are a very wise man. The problem with a lot of computer products is that they still meet the needs of most users, even if they are 5 or even 10 years old. You would not build an aircraft and then throw it away after 2 years - why should we be doing the same with computers?

Re:No, crank it out asafp please!

[Skadet]

I'm too late to the game to be modded -- or possibly read -- but I love this line of thinking. It works in pretty much all facets of life.

For example, 5 years ago, I was driving a car from 1986. It was in great shape, ran well, etc. A buddy of mine sugguested, "Hey, let's go test drive some new cars! Just for the heck of it. It'll be fun!" And I said.... no, thanks. I know there are cars out there that blow mine away, but I'm *happy* with what I have, and I don't want to make myself unhappy by sampling the other goods.

If the parent's idea is the foundation of a solid, living-within-your-means life, this idea is easily the cornerstone: don't put yourself in a position to lust after new tech. Unless you're using it for your job and it's putting money in your pocket (in which case it could safely be called an asset), it's an expense you more than likely don't need.

How About A Product That *Works*?

[WombatControl]

The short answer to the query is "absolutely not."

Adding "features" is the last thing a successful company does. Added "features" are what delineates a Creative Zen or a Dell DJ from an Apple iPod. The former two concentrated on adding a bunch of superfluous "features" designed to placate a narrow audience, while Apple just built the best damn music player they could before starting to add things.

"Features" are the enemy of a shipping product in the same way the perfect is the enemy of the good. How do you know what "features" are really useful and what "features" are wastes of time and energy. You don't - at least not if you're honest with yourself.

Successful technologies like the iPod are based on simplicity. Bad products, like Windows Vista or Office, are based on trying to jam a bunch of features down the throats of their users. The iPod isn't a success because it has the most features of any digital music player, it's the king of the hill because it does what it does damn well. Hell, the iPod shuffle is about as simple as it is possible for a music player to get, and that simplicity is why it was the success that it was.

Good design isn't about adding features. It's about ensuring that every feature is essential . If you're delaying ship dates to add features you think are worthwhile rather than features which really are essential (and those are rarely overlapping sets), then you're doing something wrong.

Re:Good Example

[sholden]

Yes, because there weren't any obvious bugs in Daggerfall.