Quote:
Originally Posted by blackacre
Point remains: We are frustrated both by the huge delays and the lack of communication. Better communication is what I thought separated companies like Omni from behemoths like Microsoft.
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Speaking as one who has worked as a developer at a very small company and a very large company, I think Omni is doing you a favor. The big company's customers demand road maps, detailed schedules, etc. and to a large degree, the big company is forced to play along and ship when they said they would, whether or not they should. It leads to a real stifling effect on development, because all the managers want only minimal changes made to keep the risks small, even if the better long-term thing to do is to gut something and re-engineer it. The small, agile company has the flexibility to ship the bits when they are ready because there are no giant customers that have signed contracts with penalties for missing ship dates and so on. Obviously, it isn't good to stretch the schedule too much without managing customer expectations accordingly, but neither should you push Omni too hard to give up one of their prime advantages. My experiences with software that was shipped on a date predicted months in advance haven't been happy ones, for the most part.
I agree it's tough being a kid waiting for Christmas morning when the adults won't even tell you what month it is, but try to let the elves build the best possible toys for you :-)