Managing multiple code branches and deliveries [closed]

Question

I work for a small one-product one-customer company that is transitioning to a one-product, multiple-customer company. Even though we've had just one customer, we've had different projects with different delivery dates, but for each project we've been able to deliver the latest monthly release which we've kept in a separate code branch in case we've had to deliver bug fixes for that specific release.

Recently, we've acquired a number of new customers and a new problem has arisen: The head branch will typically solve (without breaking functionality) many different customer specific problems, and not all customers want all the changes, but would rather prefer to cherry-pick fixes and features.

Do you have any experience with that situation, and how to handle it practically without being overloaded by testing and work (our monthly release tests take about 3 days of computer time)? And version control wise, how do you manage (I guess cvs will finally have to go...)?

Answer 1

The most simple solution is to cut the product into a core product and each feature into a plug-in. That way, every customer can cherry pick the features they want. But even this solution can quickly overwhelm a small company.

In reality, you usually are in a worse situation: You have a new feature which helps customer A and breaks something for customer B (say, customer B is not ready to modify their database and the new feature doesn't work without the change, so this in fact makes the new version unusable for customer B). If you were big, you could simply ignore customer B.

As it stands, you really need to find a way to convince your customers to move on. The most simple way is money: Tell them how much it will cost them to get a tailor made product and how much all them will save if you can find a solution that suits everyone. Invite your customers over, build a list of changes together and have everyone agree on the plan.

Also, you really must have automatic unit tests, so you can be 100% sure that the product which leaves the house today can't possible be worse than what you sold four weeks ago.

Even with the best version control system out there (for me, that would be git), you can't solve the fan-out you get if you can't get everyone pull into the same direction (except, of course, you can really split each customer into a plug-in).