Sign of the times

Sep 2005:
"IBM adds more than 175 new features to Lotus Notes and Domino."
http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=11757

Sep 2002:
“Lotus Notes 6 and Lotus Domino 6 solutions were released to the market in September 2002 —offering over 1,000 new features and enhancements in response to customer requests and evolving market requirements -- with the largest focus on reducing total cost of ownership.”

http://www.group-wave.be/groupwave/website6/GW_V2.nsf/0/4ED3D1D1E01607CEC1256EAE003BAA14

Comments

[Subhan]

R6 was a major release with a huge gap from R5. With 6.5, IBM is now coming up with more frequent incremental releases.
So one can see glimpse of Hannover (Lotus Notes 8) next year end. And its a client focused, so there would be major visible changes/features.

[Joel Demay]

Or maybe back in the R6 days our Mkt dept was more creative, and able to turn line items into brand new features.

[cliffreeves]

Freud is supposed to have said "Sometimes, my dear, a cigar is just a cigar."

And sometimes, facts are just facts.

[Simon Barratt]

I'm sure Freud was very impressed with the attributes of cigars, but you can not hide from the fact the IBM, have changed their deployment methods to provide more frequent updates, which result in less new fetaures per upgrade. That is the nature of the strategy.

In addition, they made it clear that the x.0 releases tend to be more server side focussed and x.5 releases more client side focussed, and the client is where you can start racking up the new feature counts easily!

It's almost like expecting 1,000 new features from Exchange 2003 SP2!

P.S. A bigger comment box would be easier to type in. It would stop me previewing 3 time prior to posting!

[cliffreeves]

If teh story is true, it was Freud's nephew who found the significance in cigars.

That aside, I think you and teh other posters make two good points:

1) Comparing the size of the 2002 and 2005 releases is not strictly fair. More mature product, more frequent releases, etc. However, some of the decline *must* be due to Gary Devendorf's departure.

2) This typepad comment box is pathetic. Richard Schwartz said the same thing. I'm new to blogging and to typepad, but overall it's been great for a novice like me. Now, though, I am beginning to see some limitations. I'll pass on this observation to the typepad folks.

Meanwhile, maybe you could just comment briefly with a link to a post/response on your own blog. Not ideal, I know. Richard did that on one of his comments.

Thanks for the thoughtful comments, everyone.

And hello again, Joel.