Earlier this year we reviewed our strategy for service pack delivery and have stuck to a schedule during 2007 that we want to continue into next year. This means that we are releasing a SP each quarter for the current releases and not so frequent SPs for mature releases. We want to take this approach so that customers are less dependent upon hot fixes, which are by their very nature, created against tight deadlines and can't always be tested to the extent we'd like. With Service Packs we have a more formalised QA process which involves a greater level of integration testing. So the message is, you're better waiting for a Service Pack if you can. This is not to say we won't continue to provide HFs when appropriate but we want to concentrate on providing better SPs rather than frequent HFs. The schedule for the next 6 months is shown below and gives you an idea of the number of releases that we have to support and provide SPs for.
September 2007
V6 SP5
CA6 SP3
DA6 SP2
EV2007 SP1
CA2007 SP1
DA2007 SP1
October 2007
EV7 SP3
CA7 SP3
DA7 SP3
December 2007/January 2008
EV2007 SP2
CA2007 SP2
DA2007 SP2
February 2008
EV7 SP4
CA7 SP4
DA7 SP4
NB: We generally release the SPs on the last Friday of the month so the December SPs will probably roll into early January to accommodate the holiday period.
Message Edited by EV Guys on 01-29-2008 03:07 AM
