Annual Product Releases

[dgschaefer]

Return Creo to regular, annual, product version releases.

As I recall, this was the promise delivered when Creo was announced.  Wildfire, it was said, had too long between releases, Creo would restore stability and would see annual releases each spring.  That was true for Creo 1 & 2, but Creo 3 is already late and not scheduled for release for another year.

It has been said that customers would rather see a release delayed to insure quality rather than pushed out to meet a schedule, I'd say customers deserve both.  If a new feature is not up to the quality standards that the customers expect, push it to the next release and ship the remainder on time.  As it is, rather than getting some of the new features that may be ready, we get nothing for months.

A new customer or a 12 month maintenance renewal ought to be able to know that they will receive the next version before their maintenance expires.  As of Creo 2, customers are paying 2+ years of maintenance and getting no new software.

[gzhou-2]

It seems Creo 2.0 has serious performance regressing and stable issue, so make Creo 3.0 delay, delay again, delay again again.

[bduncan]

EN

[dveljkovic]

I do not know how big PTC company is, but they should have people to develop new features (look for ideas from other CAD software), people who optimize the code (so Creo can run faster) and people who are fixing bugs (so Creo does not creep all the time). Bringing new versions with half made/tested new features will bring us no good. I do not understand why any dialog window would require new version. For some simple fixes there should be no "big number" release, unless it is a advertisement show-off, of course.

[AndreasWidmann]

I can not agree with that. You often can see this leading to performance or other problems on other software.

So why force anual release and then be forced to fight out the (known) not solved problems in public.

I encourage PTC to go back to the way before announcing annual releases instead.

I always kept up thumps for that opinion of PTC to make a (major) release only when it's time for a (major) release. Please go on with that, it really improves product quality!

[dgschaefer]

An annual release doesn't have to mean lower quality.  Absolutely, nothing should be released if the quality isn't there.  This would require good product planning along the way, identifying targeted functionality early and evaluating it at specific dates to see if it will be ready for release in time.  It may mean that PTC has to put off some new functionality to the next release or maybe a later build.

It is frankly rather ironic that PTC sells software to help customers manage projects better and get them to market sooner, but their own products are taking longer and longer to get to market.

We all manage our product schedules and feature sets to specific release dates. We have to in order to survive in the market.  PTC should do the same.

[dgschaefer]

For the 34 of you who voted up, I guess PTC announced at Liveworx that they are going to annual releases:

Tom Uminn wrote:

... PTC announced at LiveWorx this year that they are switching to annual releases for Creo.  A new version of Creo will be released each March.  Creo 5 in 2018, Creo 6 in 2019, and Creo 7 in 2020.

There is also this concept of "Enterprise Releases".  Creo 4 and Creo 7 will be considered enterprise releases while Creo 5 and 6 will be considered "SMB" (small business) releases.  The assumption is that the really large companies (think >10,000 Creo users) will only upgrade Creo versions every three years.  This means the support window will be shorter for Creo 5 and Creo 6 than what it will be for Creo 4 and Creo 7.

Windchill will also follow a similar cadence, but every 18 months instead of annually.

[StephenW]

That link isn't working for me.

[TomU]

It's in the PTC Creo Sneak Peek area which was used for pre-Creo 4.0 beta testing.  I don't think the group can be joined anymore...