So, we're finally winding down the mad pre-Christmas game rush. First came Warhammer Online which was a major game release with a lot of new functionality for us. Then came expansions for Everquest and Everquest II. Then came Warcraft: WoTLK which just about everyone has been waiting for with baited breath. This week is LoTRO's Mines of Moria expansion.
Needless to say, it's been a mad house here at Guild Launch, but what a great time for gaming. A major new game, expansions for new games, expansions for old games. There is a little bit of something for everyone.
But, we never stop here at Guild Launch so once the dust settles on these launches were right back to expanding and enhancing our feature set. It's going to be a fun End of Year here at Guild Launch so hold on tight!
-Stephen
Monday, November 17, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
The Guild Launch Development Approach
I thought I would give you guys some more insight into our development process. Every company develops a bit differently, and personally I like to see some of the "inner workings" of things, so here it goes. Following is a description of our "Release" process which is one aspect of development. I'll get more into the "Coding" aspect of things in some other blog.
Guild Launch operates on an accelerated time schedules compared to a lot of software development companies and application developers. Due to this we have a somewhat unique way of managing releases and our approach to them. I could probably find a name like "Agile Software Development" or "Scrum" that would approximate our system, but after doing web development for more than 12 years (scary, I know) it's a bit closer to "Stephen's Method" than anything.
Goals
Our goals for development and as a company are:
The key to our release process is flexibility and an adherence to making a plan and working the plan, but not being hancuffed by our own plan. We plan at a high level to do a release every 2-3 weeks. This lets us get an overall picture from a scheduling standpoint. However, we don't time box ourselves so much that we don't develop a key feature just because we only have 2 or 3 weeks, which is why our releases fluctuate in time. Also, you sometimes see a major feature come out a week after another release because we actually worked on it in the prior release and then finished it up afterwards.
Scope & "What's in a Release"
In every release I try to create a core feature set or "theme" by having the following in the release:
A. 1-2 New Feature
B. 1-2 Enhancement to an Existing Feature
C. 3-4 Bugs or "Rough Edges" fixed or polished. (Major bugs are almost always Hotfixed)
The rest of a release is planned around the scope of those "core features" and our timeline for this release. If we have some more time in the schedule and the core features are small we fill in with more enhancements, more polish and more new features. If core features are larger in scope then we fill in with less. The goal here is to ensure the application is always moving forward and to hit our "core feature" mark, but deliver more whenever we can.
Quality Assurance
When you're moving fast and running light you have to make sure you give time to quality assurance. One thing we've done to increase our quality is bring in a new Customer Service person, Mike. Mike has been heavily involved on the support side since he came on, but in the last few release Mike's role as lead customer support has also morphed into him being the guy who "Green Lights" our releases.
This means that Jun and I, who do the coding, don't also make the decision to release the build anymore, Mike does. He tests it, plans the testing, helps us test it, then says "Go or No Go" when he's done. When you're moving as fast as we do QA is critical, so we're constantly evolving our processes here. As Mike gets more involved quality only increases.
Post-Release
I always dedicate time post release for tweaks. The day of the release is dedicated to fixing any issues that creep up and any minor tweaks our customers bring up. This, in many ways is the toughest part of the job because we like to engage our customers, but don't like to say "No". In addition, we seem more responsive some times than we do at other times. This is primarily due to where we are in the release schedule. We have specific times where we can quickly absorb and incorporate user feedback and other times where that feedback has to be put on a list to be looked at for a later release.
After a release I categorize feedback into things we can do in a Hotfix release and things that need to be further analyzed. From there we make a patch release following on the heels of our actual release. This patch release isn't a mistake. It is intentional and planned. We would like that patch release to contain only tweaks, but it also usually contains some bug fixes.
The Whole Shebang
So, to sum it up:
Mind you all of this is done in 2-3 weeks. It's fast paced and it's fun! The whole goal here is efficient, high quality releases that incorporate as much useful user feedback as is possible. We hope you enjoy the results!
-Stephen
Guild Launch operates on an accelerated time schedules compared to a lot of software development companies and application developers. Due to this we have a somewhat unique way of managing releases and our approach to them. I could probably find a name like "Agile Software Development" or "Scrum" that would approximate our system, but after doing web development for more than 12 years (scary, I know) it's a bit closer to "Stephen's Method" than anything.
Goals
Our goals for development and as a company are:
- Frequent feature additions
- High Quality
- High responsiveness to user feeback
- Frequent feature enhancements
- Ability to respond to the market
The key to our release process is flexibility and an adherence to making a plan and working the plan, but not being hancuffed by our own plan. We plan at a high level to do a release every 2-3 weeks. This lets us get an overall picture from a scheduling standpoint. However, we don't time box ourselves so much that we don't develop a key feature just because we only have 2 or 3 weeks, which is why our releases fluctuate in time. Also, you sometimes see a major feature come out a week after another release because we actually worked on it in the prior release and then finished it up afterwards.
Scope & "What's in a Release"
In every release I try to create a core feature set or "theme" by having the following in the release:
A. 1-2 New Feature
B. 1-2 Enhancement to an Existing Feature
C. 3-4 Bugs or "Rough Edges" fixed or polished. (Major bugs are almost always Hotfixed)
The rest of a release is planned around the scope of those "core features" and our timeline for this release. If we have some more time in the schedule and the core features are small we fill in with more enhancements, more polish and more new features. If core features are larger in scope then we fill in with less. The goal here is to ensure the application is always moving forward and to hit our "core feature" mark, but deliver more whenever we can.
Quality Assurance
When you're moving fast and running light you have to make sure you give time to quality assurance. One thing we've done to increase our quality is bring in a new Customer Service person, Mike. Mike has been heavily involved on the support side since he came on, but in the last few release Mike's role as lead customer support has also morphed into him being the guy who "Green Lights" our releases.
This means that Jun and I, who do the coding, don't also make the decision to release the build anymore, Mike does. He tests it, plans the testing, helps us test it, then says "Go or No Go" when he's done. When you're moving as fast as we do QA is critical, so we're constantly evolving our processes here. As Mike gets more involved quality only increases.
Post-Release
I always dedicate time post release for tweaks. The day of the release is dedicated to fixing any issues that creep up and any minor tweaks our customers bring up. This, in many ways is the toughest part of the job because we like to engage our customers, but don't like to say "No". In addition, we seem more responsive some times than we do at other times. This is primarily due to where we are in the release schedule. We have specific times where we can quickly absorb and incorporate user feedback and other times where that feedback has to be put on a list to be looked at for a later release.
After a release I categorize feedback into things we can do in a Hotfix release and things that need to be further analyzed. From there we make a patch release following on the heels of our actual release. This patch release isn't a mistake. It is intentional and planned. We would like that patch release to contain only tweaks, but it also usually contains some bug fixes.
The Whole Shebang
So, to sum it up:
- I figure out what goes in a release.
- As things "Get into the code" I do Sneak Peak announcements to get user feedback.
- We continue developing and incorporate user feedback.
- Mike tests the release.
- Mike green lights the release (or we do more testing and devlopment)
- We do the release.
- We do a user feedback tweak release
- I do a "Postmortem" and figure out how to improve the next release and the release process
- We start planning and working on the next release
Mind you all of this is done in 2-3 weeks. It's fast paced and it's fun! The whole goal here is efficient, high quality releases that incorporate as much useful user feedback as is possible. We hope you enjoy the results!
-Stephen
The Guild Launch Tour
I decided that giving you guys a tour of Guild Launch would be fun. I took some quick pictures of the office, added some captions, and voila a tour is born. We'll do a people tour some other time, this is just a quick run down of the primary "things to see" here at Guild Launch.
Well, every business has a door, and this is ours.
A News Article The Richmond Times Dispatch did an article on Guild Launch and our approach to "Uniting Gamers."
That about wraps up the things I would show a person who dropped in to visit us. I hope you enjoyed it, let me know if there is anything else you'd like to see.
-Stephen
* Note: This is a repost from our old blog forums
Well, every business has a door, and this is ours.
A News Article The Richmond Times Dispatch did an article on Guild Launch and our approach to "Uniting Gamers."
That about wraps up the things I would show a person who dropped in to visit us. I hope you enjoyed it, let me know if there is anything else you'd like to see.
-Stephen
* Note: This is a repost from our old blog forums
Stephen: What I Do...
I figured I'd kick off this first dev blog by talking about what I do here at Guild Launch. My corporate title is CEO/President. I own the company. Guild Launch was created because I've built guild sites for my own guilds, and I've got more than 12 years of experience in Web Development and this type of company is right up my alley.
On a functional level I am a programmer, project manager and the architect of Guild Launch. I specify how the application should behave in general then run it by the rest of the team and our customers for sanity checks as we refine it into the actual implementation. With input from the team we determine what will be in each release. How long it needs to be tested, etc. We throw ideas around in our conference room then go write code.
I've played MMOs essentially since they started. I played Ultima, but didn't care for it. I lost alot of sleep in Anarchy Online. I helped control the Galaxy in Star Wars Galaxies and I have characters in WoW, LOTRO and Vanguard and now Age of Conan. I help run a guild in WoW that has been active since game launch and is still active. The only guild like that left on the server. We peaked at over 200 members and now have around 90.
My goal is to bring the best guild hosting I can to our customers and to provide a high level of support, which is why I spend so much time here in the forums. My goal is to continually develop features and to never let our product stagnate and with our customer's continued support and evangelism we will do that for a long time to come.
-Stephen
* This post is a repost of an old post from our forums.
On a functional level I am a programmer, project manager and the architect of Guild Launch. I specify how the application should behave in general then run it by the rest of the team and our customers for sanity checks as we refine it into the actual implementation. With input from the team we determine what will be in each release. How long it needs to be tested, etc. We throw ideas around in our conference room then go write code.
I've played MMOs essentially since they started. I played Ultima, but didn't care for it. I lost alot of sleep in Anarchy Online. I helped control the Galaxy in Star Wars Galaxies and I have characters in WoW, LOTRO and Vanguard and now Age of Conan. I help run a guild in WoW that has been active since game launch and is still active. The only guild like that left on the server. We peaked at over 200 members and now have around 90.
My goal is to bring the best guild hosting I can to our customers and to provide a high level of support, which is why I spend so much time here in the forums. My goal is to continually develop features and to never let our product stagnate and with our customer's continued support and evangelism we will do that for a long time to come.
-Stephen
* This post is a repost of an old post from our forums.
New Guild Launch Blog Site
Greetings Everyone! We're going to be testing out a Blogger site to use as a development/company blog for the Guild Launch team. We intend to post more industry news and things that aren't support related here. This is a trial run to see if it works for us.
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