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?

Who is kidding who?

[WebHostingGuy]

Read the article and the real reason is plain as day:

"The main holdups were a copyright protection mechanism for the PS3's high-definition DVD player."
Yeah, right, top of the line cool features are delaying shipment. By the way, I have a bridge I want to sell you; and Vista is shipping this month!!

How coincidental!

[Rob T Firefly]

Purely by chance, this story breaks on the same page as the latest Duke Nukem Forever story...

So...

[monkaduck]

This explains Dunke Nukem Forever! They're just waiting for everything to be developed so they can implement it in!

Good Example

[XMilkProject]

Bethesda is an example of a company that typically waits until everything is 'just right' before releasing.

The company rarely gives any public information about timelines, they simple say "It will be released when it is done". Which often includes many long delays, but when the product finally is released you can always count on getting your money's worth.

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.

featurecide is easy!

[geoff lane]

You can always make your product better by killing one feature.

This rule is recursive.

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.

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.