Ham Radio Deluxe Software Development Update as of 6.7.0.301 Release

Whenever we do a software release, it's a bit like traveling back in time to when I was a nightclub deejay. Someone would come and say, "Hey, play Freebird!" If I played it, someone else would come back and say, "Why are you playing that junk, play something we can dance to!" And so it goes...

With the release, I have 50% of the responses that will say, "Hey, you guys do too many releases. You slow down and just focus on adding new features!"

The other 50% will say, "Why are you wasting time adding new radios and features when you haven't fixed the item I reported months ago? You need to speed things up and give us more releases!"

Honestly, the answer is somewhere in the middle. It's a matter of balance. I've written on the 80/20 approach to fixes and features before.

We have customers who have been waiting on some specific things to be tended. For example, the next most frequent request we get is to "fix the QSL labeling feature." As a result, I've moved those items (story points, if you like) into the current development cycle (sprint, if you're into things like agile, scrum, kanban, etc). One of the three developers are pretty much dedicated to the QSL labeling item. But because people have been waiting, and continuing to support us, we will absolutely keep moving on the requests they've made.

We have long-standing requests to add the US Counties award and DX Marathon. I've moved those things into this development cycle. I'd like to add WSIs for State, zones, and grids. There are some open requests that I would like to tackle soon regarding the Rotator and Satellite app. We also have a concept for a great new feature that I would like to get out before the holidays.

Generally, we'll go from doing 10-12 releases per year to about 4. We can do this because we have more developers working simultaneously in the code and the backlog has been dramatically reduced over the past couple years.

You can always see what we're working on by viewing the current development list located here: https://currentdevlist.hamradiodeluxe.com/

As always, the release notes can be found here https://releasenotes.hamradiodeluxe.com