Lessons Learned for Agilebits

dawoife

Since I can live with the old FF3.6 extension for now with the caveat that I had to downgrade to the old browser version I thought to spend a few sentences on what possible lessons learned Agilebits staff can derive from the current dilemma for future updates.



My main browser is Firefox which I also set as the default browser. I only use Safari occasionally when I need a 2nd browser window on my second iMAC screen

So I'm not that familiar with the Safari implications of 1P. Therefore feel free to comment from other browsers / customers viewpoints.

If acknowledged well by Agilebits, future updates could be smoother for all of our browsers and our nerves...



[b]Lessons Learned from a Firefox user perspective[/b]

1. From my point of view there was no need for a hurry for a production version of the 1P FF6 module as long as there is an older FF version out there that is also supported with security updates. Only very few Apps (I'm guessing - if any at all) need a new browser version exactly from day1 onwards...

2. The previous working version could have still been considered as the main version, that could be used by users that prefer to be on the safe side (as I am)

3. Early adopters that want to change quickly to every new SW version might accept using a beta from 1P, then its up to them to decide whether they stay with the previos version that works well or they want to go for the latest shiny features but then in beta for an appropriate time period

4. An issue to be solved in this scenario would be that somehow the user from topic no. 2 above would need to get the information that 1P has not been released for the brand new browser version. Otherwise one makes the update, then notices that 1P is not supported yet and has to downgrade again

5. Once the new version has undergone QA and beta testing and production-readiness is given, Agilebits publishes the update and life continues the easy way (hopefully). Again I'm not sure how a standard user would notice that - maybe via an 1P release note?...

6. Some of Agilebits customer communication was terrible as the impression was created that the customer voices were just ignored (whether it was meant that way doesn't matter, it was the perception of us customers that has been come up that way...). This made people (not only me) upset and made the situation even worse. You are well advised from Agilebits if you draw your conclusions afterwards and work on this.

7. If above mentioned topics 1-3 were the main communication messages, then everyone would have known what to expect and the angry user community might be reduced to the "beta freaks" that would still argue about miss missing QA&testing..., but the "public user community would be less affected".



Well, again my (limited) Firefox view with a working "old" version. I'm interested in your comments...

Best regards dawoife

[Deleted User]

Hallo dawoife,



Thank you for your perspective. I've read it only once so far, but there is a lot to digest, and I believe it deserves additional review on my part. I printed it, and I will take time today to review each item and to jot down some notes/thoughts for each.



We can all learn from introspection, and I will be the first to admit that we are not perfect. Nor do I read anything in your comments that causes me to infer that you think you are either. I've enjoyed our discussions via PM, and your post helps me on my journey toward putting myself in your shoes.



Thank you again for your post. Constructive criticism is [i]not always[/i] received well by others, but destructive criticism is [i]never[/i] well received by [i]anyone[/i]. During these frustrating times, I am glad that you chose to offer the constructive version. Now, there is a an opportunity for learning and improvement.



Cheers!



Brandt



P.S. I was going to add the "dancer emoticon" after the "shoes" comment, but I noticed that it looks like somebody "swinging punches". Thought I'd better hold off that one for now. <img src='http://forum.agilebits.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

MikeT

Hi dawoife,



Thanks for taking the time to write this up, it's always helpful to see through the eyes of our customers and learn what we can do to improve in the future.



I'd like to bring up a couple of things:

1) There were many confusion in regards to the support for Firefox versions. We heard from Mozilla that they were going to drop support for Firefox 3 and then they changed their mind later. This of course affected our development plans. Nobody is at fault here, we all just needed to communicate better and I agree with you here, communications is key.



2) As much as we love to recommend that users stay with the current version, there were many users who felt pushed to update the latest version because of the browsers. It's one thing to wait and postpone but it's another thing to keep seeing the prompt to update, especially with Firefox 3 users who'll get a prompt to update to Firefox 6.



People are used to having 1Password support on the first day for all browsers and they have the same expectation for Firefox 6 and future versions. This isn't an excuse but that's the general expectation for majority of our users and when that changes, the reaction would be negative, just as it is now. There is no perfect one-fit-all solution for this except for better communications.



3) Mozilla has a 6 week development cycle, they release a new major version of Firefox every 6 weeks. That is barely enough for our beta testers to find any issues. If we stay with a longer beta period of testing for Firefox, 2-3 new Firefox releases have been released and our extension may not work for Firefox 7 or 8 and that'd require another round of testing, pushing the beta development back. This'd leave people on older browsers with security issues longer and that's not acceptable for both our customers and us.



That's why we had to switch to a new extension framework that'll work with multiple Firefox versions and this is a major change in people's workflow, so we're getting a lot of opinions about the new extension because it is radically different from what they're used to in the past 5 years.



4) As long as we have been around, the release cycles have never been this fast for browser updates in the past. It's one thing being used to having a new browser version every 1-3 years for all browsers, it's another thing to have multiple major updates more than once a year for Firefox and Chrome. We're adjusting our development process to catch up and unfortunately, this rapid pace also affected majority of our users.



I agree that we may have dropped the ball on this by not communicating with our users clearly on first day. We'll do our best next time.



Thank you once again for your thoughts, it's very helpful.