The pros and cons of frequent software releases

We have been updating and maintaining a third-party piece of software for a client for over seven years now. Recently they have started releasing new versions every couple of weeks. As a SaaS solution, we tend to release new versions of Zingzam every couple of weeks but generally that imposes no new work on you, our customers. On the other hand, I won't buy another phone from HTC because they were too slow to update the firmware on the HTC Hero. So where is the perfect balance? It depends on the industry of course but here are some pros and cons of frequent releases that you should consider when deciding your release schedule.

Some advantages of a frequent release cycle:

• Easy to fix minor issues quickly (like browser bugs)
• Smaller number of new features means users are more likely to try them all
• Decreased chance of upgrade problems
• Tighter feedback loop - problems in this release can be fixed soon in the next release
• Forces stakeholders to break feature requests down into more manageable chunks

Some disadvantages of a frequent release cycle:

• Constant change can be disorientating to your users
• For non-SaaS software, you introduce cost to your customers
• Extensions and third-party software might struggle to keep up
• Large features and changes are harder to plan for

At Zingzam, we assume that users expect rapid and frequent bug fixes but not frequent and numerous feature updates. We believe that this provides a good balance of making sure things work as expected and introducing change.