Thanks for submitting this gtzi. Any questions, I'm here (or if you're old-skool, add a comment to the blog). :)

I really _am_ curious about why people have deadlines...isn't it ready when it's ready? :)

Peldi

Having no deadlines means you need good prioritization ("what's important next?") and motivation (to do that instead of procrastrinating working on a cool but not very important feature instead). It can be too much freedom (see Duke Nukem Forever).

Sure, ideally it'd be better to fix the causes, but that's hard to do, and deadlines are easy to set (although not as easy to match :).

And, there are situations why you want something to be ready by some external event (eg. to show on a conference, or for contractors, the client actualy expects it to be done, etc).

Thanks Senko, I agree that good prioritization and frequent small releases do help a lot.

As for procrastination, I think that's fixed by recruiting people who are the right fit and would do the job even if they weren't paid to do it. :) Hard to do, and some procrastination happens to everyone, it's natural. :)

Re: external events, that's a good point. And if you're working for clients, that's a whole different game. :)

The key thing is that you are (very) profitable with infinite runway, which is of course a great situation. When money is running low, the pressure builds.

Disagree.

Duke Nukem Forever.

Nuff said.

Well, times have changed a bit. We release one micro-release at the time, almost weekly. I guess I should include this strategy in the post...

They haven't changed, it's that you sell a small code-base product.

What happens in a couple of years when, for example, you want to redo the whole UI in one go? Because you can't release that piecemeal.

You're actually describing a classic anti-procrastination technique, small bite sized chunks that are so easy you can't fail.

In programming that's not always possible. An AAA game being a perfect example.

Excellent points, upvoted! :)