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Apple executes massive feature releases on a yearly waterfall-like schedule across hundreds of teams. It requires honesty, transparency, strong leadership (rut

Apple executes massive feature releases on a yearly waterfall-like schedule across hundreds of teams. It requires honesty, transparency, strong leadership (ruthless prioritization), strong cross-team goodwill, strong cross-team collaboration as well as a solid body of experienced top-tier engineers. Other than that there's no magic. While there are teams within apple that does scrum/agile, none of the core OS/frameworks teams does it AFAIK, and I do think it's incompatible with shipping on a hardware-aligned schedule.

monadic3 6y ago
I'm sure Apple devotes time to research as well, even if it is under a different budget and/or department.
virgilp 6y ago
Adobe executes (executed) massive releases on a well-defined cadence (1.5 yr per "creative suite"). Sure, I won't say they don't have collaboration, or top-tier engineers etc. But in the end, the success of this well defined cadence boiled down to the simple strategy of "we release what is ready". Everybody knew the deadlines well in advance, and everybody strives to 'make it' - but, (not so) occasionally, some teams didn't and you could see entire features get ruthlessly cut out. Simply no other way of synchronizing across the entire company... you cut scope to make it in time, and if you can't make it, that's it, your feature gets cut. With enough teams working, you still get features to showcase at each release.
- vinay_ys 6y ago
  That's pretty much how Linux kernel releases work. Just having a regularly scheduled release train that always runs on time – that you can catch (or not) is great.
- andrekandre 6y ago
  > "we release what is ready" this really is key, if you can do it alot of companies though, are "business driven" which means releases and schedules are set beforehand, which makes this hard... (but if you can do it, its great!)
- throw14082020 6y ago
  What happens when you can release whenever. This question is probably quite relevant to most developers, because CD (continuous delivery) is popular.
AuthorizedCust 6y ago
How do you know they are thoroughly waterfall? How do you know they don’t use agile, time-boxing, etc.? Apple is so secretive, it feels like we know of little other than what they are confident about releasing. The things that weren’t done on a schedule compatible with a hardware release, how often are they simply postponed? And for those postponements that they do admit, how many are waved away with a creative explanation? I think you need a good deal more information to back up your point about Apple’s work management.
- kridsdale1 6y ago
  I worked there 6 years. It is 100% Waterfall. Things that are too buggy by July 1st are delayed by 12 months.
calpaterson 6y ago
> Apple executes massive feature releases on a yearly waterfall-like schedule across hundreds of teams. It requires [...] And no doubt a great deal of crunch time, their fair share of delays, some major messes and the occasional outright cancellation. And if I'm not wrong their roadmap is not public information. I personally find it hard to believe that a large company can exhibit all those adjectives you list. Everyone finds this hard.
nightski 6y ago
When you have hundreds of teams you can cut a bunch of features and it still looks like you are massively productive each release :) Not everyone has that luxury unfortunately. Some of us are a single team of a handful of developers.
trimbo 6y ago
Have you noticed their declining OS release quality in recent years? I have, and I now wait 6 months to upgrade. The triangle is real[1]. Something's gotta give when a deadline can't move, and as we know from Brooks, software development speed doesn't increase linearly with more people. So it's primarily quality or scope that must suffer to hit a software deadline. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  People have been saying that since OS X first came out, and OS 9 was so buggy it had a famous cute bomb icon for when it crashed.
  - sleepygardener 6y ago
    I'm using MacOs/OsX since Lion, and I can say that it was very stable (even on my Hackintosh) and I observed stability issues increasing with all the following versions (on real Apple HW) and I'm on the same ship as GP never upgrading to newer versions until at least 6 months pass.
  - shp0ngle 6y ago
    Yeah, first few OS X releases were famously buggy as they were figuring this UNIX stuff and the OS 9 compatibility, but they stabilized about 10.4 Tiger. Honestly the OS X itself (uhhh macOS now) is still fine, even with Big Sur and its weird iOS controls, however the other software is sometimes weird; but - let's say Numbers was never good and iWeb was always downright bad. And iTunes was bad in Jobs era and is still bad (as Music). I however still kind of miss when native Cocoa apps were sort of good and not just ported iOS app via Catalyst or something. But whatever. I'm old I guess
  - sk5t 6y ago
    Don't the bomb icon and "Sad Mac" go back to the very beginning?
  - Dirlewanger 6y ago
aqme28 6y ago
That doesn't imply anything about estimates. Do they tell you at the beginning of that cycle what features to expect? Or do they constantly work on features, and then at presentation time do a freeze?
robertlagrant 6y ago
How do you know it's waterfall-like? If you ship working software every 2 weeks and every 26th one you release, hooray, you have yearly software that's super likely to work well.
- kridsdale1 6y ago
  Apple produces a new build of iOS or MacOS every 24 hours. For the many years that I had to suffer through that, about 40% of those builds were dogshit and unusable. The public gets the 360th release, and hopefully by then the PMs have driven enough burnout in the engineers that it is mostly acceptable to users.
  - robertlagrant 6y ago
    Makes sense!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kanzenryu2 6y ago
The macbook range had years of delays

monadic3 6y ago

I'm sure Apple devotes time to research as well, even if it is under a different budget and/or department.

virgilp 6y ago

Adobe executes (executed) massive releases on a well-defined cadence (1.5 yr per "creative suite"). Sure, I won't say they don't have collaboration, or top-tier engineers etc. But in the end, the success of this well defined cadence boiled down to the simple strategy of "we release what is ready". Everybody knew the deadlines well in advance, and everybody strives to 'make it' - but, (not so) occasionally, some teams didn't and you could see entire features get ruthlessly cut out. Simply no other way of synchronizing across the entire company... you cut scope to make it in time, and if you can't make it, that's it, your feature gets cut. With enough teams working, you still get features to showcase at each release.

vinay_ys 6y ago
That's pretty much how Linux kernel releases work. Just having a regularly scheduled release train that always runs on time – that you can catch (or not) is great.
andrekandre 6y ago
> "we release what is ready" this really is key, if you can do it alot of companies though, are "business driven" which means releases and schedules are set beforehand, which makes this hard... (but if you can do it, its great!)
throw14082020 6y ago
What happens when you can release whenever. This question is probably quite relevant to most developers, because CD (continuous delivery) is popular.

AuthorizedCust 6y ago

How do you know they are thoroughly waterfall? How do you know they don’t use agile, time-boxing, etc.? Apple is so secretive, it feels like we know of little other than what they are confident about releasing. The things that weren’t done on a schedule compatible with a hardware release, how often are they simply postponed? And for those postponements that they do admit, how many are waved away with a creative explanation? I think you need a good deal more information to back up your point about Apple’s work management.

kridsdale1 6y ago
I worked there 6 years. It is 100% Waterfall. Things that are too buggy by July 1st are delayed by 12 months.

calpaterson 6y ago

> Apple executes massive feature releases on a yearly waterfall-like schedule across hundreds of teams. It requires [...] And no doubt a great deal of crunch time, their fair share of delays, some major messes and the occasional outright cancellation. And if I'm not wrong their roadmap is not public information. I personally find it hard to believe that a large company can exhibit all those adjectives you list. Everyone finds this hard.

nightski 6y ago

When you have hundreds of teams you can cut a bunch of features and it still looks like you are massively productive each release :) Not everyone has that luxury unfortunately. Some of us are a single team of a handful of developers.

trimbo 6y ago

Have you noticed their declining OS release quality in recent years? I have, and I now wait 6 months to upgrade. The triangle is real[1]. Something's gotta give when a deadline can't move, and as we know from Brooks, software development speed doesn't increase linearly with more people. So it's primarily quality or scope that must suffer to hit a software deadline. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle

alisonkisk 6y ago
People have been saying that since OS X first came out, and OS 9 was so buggy it had a famous cute bomb icon for when it crashed.
- sleepygardener 6y ago
  I'm using MacOs/OsX since Lion, and I can say that it was very stable (even on my Hackintosh) and I observed stability issues increasing with all the following versions (on real Apple HW) and I'm on the same ship as GP never upgrading to newer versions until at least 6 months pass.
- shp0ngle 6y ago
  Yeah, first few OS X releases were famously buggy as they were figuring this UNIX stuff and the OS 9 compatibility, but they stabilized about 10.4 Tiger. Honestly the OS X itself (uhhh macOS now) is still fine, even with Big Sur and its weird iOS controls, however the other software is sometimes weird; but - let's say Numbers was never good and iWeb was always downright bad. And iTunes was bad in Jobs era and is still bad (as Music). I however still kind of miss when native Cocoa apps were sort of good and not just ported iOS app via Catalyst or something. But whatever. I'm old I guess
- sk5t 6y ago
  Don't the bomb icon and "Sad Mac" go back to the very beginning?
- Dirlewanger 6y ago

aqme28 6y ago

That doesn't imply anything about estimates. Do they tell you at the beginning of that cycle what features to expect? Or do they constantly work on features, and then at presentation time do a freeze?

robertlagrant 6y ago

How do you know it's waterfall-like? If you ship working software every 2 weeks and every 26th one you release, hooray, you have yearly software that's super likely to work well.

kridsdale1 6y ago
Apple produces a new build of iOS or MacOS every 24 hours. For the many years that I had to suffer through that, about 40% of those builds were dogshit and unusable. The public gets the 360th release, and hopefully by then the PMs have driven enough burnout in the engineers that it is mostly acceptable to users.
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  Makes sense!

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

kanzenryu2 6y ago

The macbook range had years of delays