C9 is about to reach a new milestone : it's 300th released version. Since November 2009 we have averaged two versions a week. Now seems as good a time as any to measure velocity of change in the product and to discuss why this is occurring.
Firstly, measuring changes by measuring 'function points'. In c9 a 'function point' typically represents a single window, a report etc. It mostly only measures things end users directly interact with; so it is not a complete measure of everything in the c9 product. But it provides a fairly consistent way to measure the number of end-user features in c9 and how that has changed over time.
A few observations. C9 today has increased amount of functionality in the DMS by 70%. At our current velocity, c9 will have literally twice as many features in it as the old c8 in 18 months from now. Or approx 5 years since development stopped on c8.
Next rate of change month to month on existing functionality appears to be increasing. Though not enough data yet exists to be certain. A pattern, if any, will become more obvious in another 6 months or so I think.
Why all this change? The change is driven substantially by users of c9 responding to changes across the business domain and opportunities that increased computing power and the evolution of the Internet provides. We suspect that change is self reinforcing. Users see changes, and those changes inspire new ideas, open up new opportunities to utilise computing power and build upon newly created facilities further to improve productivity, efficiency and ultimately profitability. Change is a positive feedback loop.
Largely because of inter-connectivity enhancements thanks to the public Internet, and modern approaches to writing and managing computer software, it is possible aggressively pursue a strategy of rapid, continual improvement to such a degree that we are able to provide an increasingly rich and sophisticated product. This is the main reason why we modified our billing model with advent of c9; to optimize our business to focus on growing and improving the c9 product.
