Well, we finally did it. We got the project that has literally sapped the very life from me (ok, maybe not literally) is reached its first milestone, and we released over the weekend.
I actually got a day off after three weeks of 80+ hours. How blissful. <sigh>
Unfortunately, the project came in on a wing and a prayer. Just some interesting statistics: We have over 1100 features. We produced 300 defect reports on those features. In some areas of the product, we produced a defect (a real one, mind you) for every 4 requirements. One out of three in one or two areas.
Yet, we pushed to production.
We have a backlog of medium (read as: important but not mission critical) defects you wouldn't believe, and we will be patching this for the next several weeks whilst we gear up for phase two of the project...due on April 1st. We will be hustling like heck to get through the defects generated for phase 1 just in time to be handed requirements for phase 2. I only hope we can get the mediums cleared out before that happens.
Shipping with defects when one is producing large volume, low margin shrink -wrapped type software is normal. It's the standard Microsoft approach. However, our clients are right across the street, and we see them everyday. We don't have a "market" but instead maintain the software that the rest of the company uses to generate revenue. I have trouble appreciating "time to market" in that situation as much as I would in a retail shop. As a developer doing the testing thing, I find the two halves of my experience at war over it.
An interesting kind of split-personality malady, wot?