[ddots-l] Re: What's Going On With CT?
- From: "Phil Muir" <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:32:37 +0100
Bill wrote: Dear Phil,
You wrote:
Also, the UI hasn't altered that much in Sonar 8.3.1. You would have been
able to put out a release that supported that Sonar update, fairly quickly.
You could have then spent the rest of the last 6 months, working on other
new features and updating your Cake Talking tutorials.
Bill replies:
As you know, Phil, so much in this life comes down to timing! :) I won't
speculate on what might have been. I do think comparisons between how you
work as a solo HSC developer and how we work as a team that develops JAWS
scripts is not really comparing apples with apples as the saying goes.
Phil replied: to some degree I take your point. on the other hand, you work
in a similar way to myself. meaning that you have one developer working on
the Cake Talking product. He is responsible for all development, tutorials,
manuals etc. This then goes off for beta testing. All of that soul
development is quite a burden to place on one individual. On the other
hand, he is paid to do that so should be able to get out updates in a more
timely manner than 8 months. For example, you could have left the tricky
stuff such as V-Vocal, clip manipulation etc to a future update. You could
have put the new plug-in support for Sonar 8.3.1 out early and the V-64.
That would have been a nice taster for customers and would make customers
feel valued and not forgotten. you could have still charged for the
additional stuff as that's pretty major.
As for myself, I develop something, write the various help files for it
then, put it out for testing.
Bill wrote: I will say that I have been fairly adamant in the past about not
releasing new CakeTalking features until they have been fully documented in
CT's tutorial documents and online help. That is, there have been times in
a development cycle when something has been tested and working well but has
not yet been documented. I have insisted on that documentation before
release. My independent developer sometimes elects to add new functionality
in the meantime and I continue to withhold release. One of those
unstoppable forces that meets an immovable object situations.
Phil replied: I know. I have been party to some of this in the recent past,
smile. That's why you may want to think about drawing up a feature list and
timeline for implementation. Then, implement that and all required
tutorials and documentation and have a code freeze on all future features
until the current update is out the door. Then, when that's out the door as
an official release, start on new features, write tutorials and documents
for that and so on.
Bill wrote: So, offering intrepid customers the option to use pre-release
software does
relieve the urgency to get everything documented before anybody other than
our beta testers gets to try new things. It is something that you and a
number of other customers have requested and, as I said, I want to try this
approach in future.
Phil replied: sounds good as we will probably discover bugs that your beta
testers may have missed, smile.
Bill wrote: But I continue to believe that one of the strongest features of
CakeTalking as a product is the detail found in its tutorials. We have a lot
of power users like yourself pushing CT to its limits but we also have even
more customers who are relatively new to JAWS, Windows, MIDI, and SONAR.
Our ideal is to offer a product that works for both seasoned
veterans and rookies. I will never forget the rookies not only because that
would be bad for business but also because we advanced users were once
rookies too and others helped us along.
Phil replied: well as someone who started out as a rooky, I must admit that
I never read any of your tutorials, smile. Always dug into Sonar's help
system instead although, I do accept that people may find using the CT
tutorials easier.
Bill wrote; I realize that I am now preaching
to the choir as you yourself are one of the most helpful people on this
list.
Phil replied: that's very kind of you to say so. BTW: speaking as a
trainer, I will continue to recommend Cake Talking to clients if after
discussions with the client, we feel that it is the best solution for them
and obviously I will be updating Cake Talking to the latest version myself
as I need to stay current.
Regards, Phil Muir
Accessibility Training
Telephone: US (615) 713-2021
UK+44-1747-821-794
Mobile: UK +44-7968-136-246
E-mail:
info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
URL:
www.accessibilitytraining.co.uk/
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