Colin,
Although I do not participate a great deal on the forum, of late, I would like to agree with Ralph.
- Of course it could well be that the reason that the search results are down is because most people are now using SailWave
Some feedback would be that we decided early in the season to go with the version that was current at the time and not to upgrade (unless absolutely necessary), as prevously an issue with an upgrade from one version to another caused us a problem. Thats not a criticism of yourself, our testing didn’t cover that particular area. I thnk we will probably do the same thing next year and go with what ever release is current in April 2007 and only change it if a bug is found that impacts the way that we use SailWave.
I think Ralph has a valid point regarding your release management. Why not only do maintenance during the summer and keep a note of nice new features that could be added? you could, if you so wish, use the yahoo voting facility to get feedback on what features the community would like to see added in the next scheduled version.
You could then build up a roadmap of what you would like to do during the following winter months, when your boat is tucked safely away and the rain is falling, etc, etc. You may even find that some of the requests disappear. I have found in the past that you can get a lot of development requests from users, because they are still learning what a product can do. As their learning progresses sometimes they realise they don’t actually need what they have asked for.
Granted, there are some that race all year round, but not the majority.
Not sure if you have come across http://www.extremeprogramming.org/ before. I have found elements of the methodology useful in some of the projects that I have run in the past.
Enjoy whats left of the season…
Regards,
Andy.
···
----- Original Message ----
From: Ralph Tingle rat@attat.com
To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, 5 September, 2006 3:45:23 PM
Subject: RE: [sailwave] Sailwave - Simplify - How?
Hi Colin
I wonder how significant it is that only a tiny number of SUG members/users have responded to your email?
Low response normally means everyone is either very happy or suffering from abject apathy (I cannot believe that it is the latter).
If my memory is not failing totally, there only seems to be a big increase of SUG traffic when you issue a new version/build.
In between times, very little - is there a message here??
Being realistic, I suspect that once users have learnt how to use their version of SW, most are happy to stick with it & continue to score the vast majority of regattas successfully.
The problem comes when a new version (of any software) is released & resources/facilitie s are moved to a different place. Once the user finds out where their pet items have moved to, everything goes quiet again.
We all have complaints about various pieces of software (Gates or others!) but life goes on & we make do with what we have got.
At the end of the day, Sailwave or any of its competitors are infinitely better than handwriting race results on a large flip chart & using the old grey matter to sort out net points, places etc - yes, I am old & grey & remember those days ;-(
My vote would be to:
-
put 1.57 back on the web site (with a different name) & let people know this is the ‘simple’ version & will not be upgraded
-
sort out any outstanding bugs on the latest build & put it on the web site as the ‘advanced’ version, upgraded from time to time
-
seek professional help to overcome your obvious psychological problem of implementing everyone’s requests within 24 hours
-
go sailing in that new craft of yours!!
If you cannot give up completely from being a Sailwave junkie, limit yourself to 6 monthly or annual releases.
All joking apart, you do a fantastic job & Qingdao is a fine testimony to your skills.
Why not sit back & bask in the glory for a change??
Regards
Ralph
-----Original Message-----
From: Colin Jenkins [mailto:colin@ sailwave. com]
Sent: 24 August 2006 09:23
To: sailwave@yahoogroup s.com
Subject: [sailwave] Sailwave - Simplify - How?
Hi,
I have been thinking a lot about how to simplify Sailwave so that it becomes
as popular as the old 1.57 again but does not loose any of its
functionality. Clearly something is wrong because the google search results
are dropping dramatically; this time last year there was ~100k hits and it’s
half that now and the decline started when I pulled 1.57 off the internet
ish. Or at least I have convinved myself that is the case…
I would be grateful for feedback about what you find awkward, weird,
baffling etc etc about the current version so I can attack it.
The previous idea of having two Sailwave’s is not practical, the solution
has to be more of a ‘feature hiding’ approach, which does in fact amount to
the same thing but doesn’t limit you later.
But what and how…?
All ideas gratefully received. ***Please don’t hold back with
criticism… *** I used Sailwave the other day and got confused myself…
The “Scoring Rules” button has to go, but I have no idea how to replace
it. This is one example of genericity (which I seem to have a bit of a
thing for) causing complexity… .
A total redesign is not ruled out; almost all of the code could be used
and presented in a different way. For example perhaps all this stufff about
selecting competitors using expressions should be dumped and the user simply
select them from a list (that will bite back though when you add new
competitors - but so what…? - this is where I have trouble - does that
matter - do I worry about things that do not matter).
NB: Personally I’m leaning towards having separate fleets in separate mini
events in tabs. This will limit the scoring possibilities but will take
away the need for scoring rules as each mini-event will have it’s own
scoring system. T think the events within a regatta need to be more
clearly
defined…
Regards,
Colin
www.sailwave. com
–
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.5/425 - Release Date: 22/08/2006