Montoya explains staggered development in a way we can all understand

Mich Angel

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Explained in superior pizza manufacturing industry standard..

Pizza... I been playing some KSP lately combined that with and... dang now I'm gonna dream about 6 Kerbal making pizza for days.

🍕🍺 👁👃👁
 

sum1

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Now I just want Pizza... can we make an official Test Squadron Pizza? it has to be black and yellow. Cheddar Cheese on the top right and bottom left? then something black on the top left and bottom right, like well done Haggis?
 

Hybus

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I get the whole staggered development approach, I work in a company that heavily utilizes it. However, it must be done well. Poorly managed you still end up with bottlenecks. For example you could have all these staggered development teams, but then another critical department that is seriously understaffed, if all these other teams rely on that one department to, let's say: shred and layer the cheese, then it really doesn't matter how many other pizza teams you have cranking out dough/sauce and standing by to deploy toppings, you've got delays while that one group is trying to engineer new and better ways to apply cheese 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 for these other groups.
 

Bambooza

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I get the whole staggered development approach, I work in a company that heavily utilizes it. However, it must be done well. Poorly managed you still end up with bottlenecks. For example you could have all these staggered development teams, but then another critical department that is seriously understaffed, if all these other teams rely on that one department to, let's say: shred and layer the cheese, then it really doesn't matter how many other pizza teams you have cranking out dough/sauce and standing by to deploy toppings, you've got delays while that one group is trying to engineer new and better ways to apply cheese 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 for these other groups.

The biggest issue I've had with staggered development is attempting to merge the codebase back to the mainline especially on core functionality that impacts the other team's codebase. The other consideration is how tightly coupled the features are to the engine. The more tightly coupled the more efficient the code is but the less resilient it is to engine changes. Without a keen architect who truly understands all of the codebase and future features you end up with teams who are significantly impacting each other's projects and at worse it's not known until branch merge and then you spend 2x the amount of time fixing the conflicts as you did originally programming the feature. If the architect knows what they are doing then it's possible to keep engine and feature implementation on the same team where changes can be incorporated and dealt with as they happen.
 

Lorddarthvik

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Now I just want Pizza... can we make an official Test Squadron Pizza? it has to be black and yellow. Cheddar Cheese on the top right and bottom left? then something black on the top left and bottom right, like well done Haggis?
Pizza. I like pizza! Gonna watch the video later, I'm all hungry now.
Cheddar for yellow is great!
How about Guiness for the black? If soaked into the crust and baked, will jt retain its color? I've seen some almost black ( dark purple) cheese at the shops as well, could work as topping with a drizzle of black olive bits.
I wanna find out if this could work. Will get back to you in a few days.

Or, you know, you could just bake till burnt and add the cheese later? Would be very Test imho.
😂😂
 

FZD

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Well, I'm happy I helped to inspire this video. A good explanation about the actual benefits of staggered development. :like:
(And I'm happy as long as nobody is saying it gives more time to complete a feature. It's same amount of man-hours, maybe used more efficiently.)

The biggest issue I've had with staggered development is attempting to merge the codebase back to the mainline especially on core functionality that impacts the other team's codebase.
Yeah, I would not want to participate in merging those tens of thousands of hours of work every 3 months.
 

Bambooza

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Well, I'm happy I helped to inspire this video. A good explanation about the actual benefits of staggered development. :like:
(And I'm happy as long as nobody is saying it gives more time to complete a feature. It's same amount of man-hours, maybe used more efficiently.)


Yeah, I would not want to participate in merging those tens of thousands of hours of work every 3 months.
It's worse its 6 months as you typically would have your mainstream then you branch it at the start of the project cycle and then attempt to merge it back to the mainline at the end which at this point is no longer remotely close to you starting point as the other team merged their code back in. This is relatively easy if there is no overlap but is a nightmare if two programmers touch the same methods and classes.
 

FZD

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It's worse its 6 months as you typically would have your mainstream then you branch it at the start of the project cycle and then attempt to merge it back to the mainline at the end which at this point is no longer remotely close to you starting point as the other team merged their code back in. This is relatively easy if there is no overlap but is a nightmare if two programmers touch the same methods and classes.
Yes, I meant you need to go through it every 3 months, as that's still the span between updates.
 

Michael

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Sep 27, 2016
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I get the whole staggered development approach, I work in a company that heavily utilizes it. However, it must be done well. Poorly managed you still end up with bottlenecks. For example you could have all these staggered development teams, but then another critical department that is seriously understaffed, if all these other teams rely on that one department to, let's say: shred and layer the cheese, then it really doesn't matter how many other pizza teams you have cranking out dough/sauce and standing by to deploy toppings, you've got delays while that one group is trying to engineer new and better ways to apply cheese 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 for these other groups.
We are looking at you UI team ʕ; •`ᴥ•´ʔ

Overall i had the impression that they already are doing staggered development, maybe not to that extent.
I guess what people have been missing is not an explanation about staggered development. One might get the impression that they thought "lol delays, lets take a random argument to chill people".

Pretty sure no one thinks SD will speed things up, actually people are concerned that giving teams more time to polish stuff will slow things down. Also its an statement to stuff they claimed before (simplified) "early backer feedback is important for the development process".

So you need to add that after the pizza has been served to the costumer he provides feedback to the pizza and returns it if he doesn't like it and gets another free pizza.
 
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