Shortening the Tail

by Jim Highsmith

In working with a number of software companies over the years, I've come to find a single metric that is very effective in determining how "agile" these organizations are: the length of the tail. The tail is the time period from "code slush" (true code freezes are rare) or "feature freeze" to RTM (release to manufacturing). It is the time when companies do some or all of the following: beta testing, regression testing, product integration, integration testing, documentation, defect fixing. The worst "tail" I've encountered was 18 months -- 18 months from feature freeze to product release, and most of that time was spent in QA. Routinely, I find software companies whose tail is four to six months.

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Shortening the TailThu Apr 24 08:20:13 CDT 2008