Release Duration and Enterprise Agility

Short release duration -- the time from starting development until it delivers measurable value (i.e., paying customers adopt an upgrade) -- is an implied goal of agile methods. Release duration incorporates the expensive parts of the value chain: build, test, deploy and sell (but not exploratory design, for example). Release duration correlates with technical debt. Attempting to reduce release duration may help drive agile behavior through a company. Finance departments often collect release duration, helping a company assess its agility. Citrix Online illustrates how process methodology, development group size and release duration relate. Its adoption of Scrum and Enterprise Scrum drove release duration down from a peak of 41 months to less than 4, shorter than it had as a small startup. Its market share rose during the same period. Data from another company, Patient Keeper, also seems to indicate that short release durations correlate with more profitable outcomes.