Yes, the big trick is to set the deadline weeks before, and if you need
to delay, you do it long before the deadline arrives. Meaning, if you
want to deadline May 1, you should decide that April 1, and if you
decide to change your mind, you should jump another month, so decide by
mid-May if June 1 is going to work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Lane wrote:
> Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com> writes:
> > On Thu, 2003-03-06 at 11:50, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> >> So you were thinking of beta for May 1?
>
> > Rather than picking an arbitrary date for the beta, wouldn't it make
> > more sense to simply put out the beta when a particular set of features
> > are finished (say, Win32 + PITR + ...)
>
> We did that for 7.1, and again in 7.2; and it was a bad mistake both
> times, because we found ourselves in a state where "it's almost done
> except X" --- and no one except the person working on X could really
> do any further development.
>
> For 7.3 we agreed to set a firm feature-freeze cutoff date well in
> advance. That worked a *lot* better, and I'd like to stick with that
> approach.
>
> I don't actually much care whether the cutoff is May 1 or June 1 or
> whatever. But I want it set in advance, and stuck to, so that people
> can plan their own efforts without wondering what will be happening.
>
> regards, tom lane
>
--
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