Dynamics of Software Development, Second Edition

Ship Mode

There is an ideal moment in every software development project when it’s clearly time for the team to enter ship mode. Many people think of ship mode as the last headlong rush to get the product out the door. I prefer to identify stages in the ship mode period: onset, transition, and endgame. No, you can’t cleanly differentiate among the stages: rather, in approximately the last third of the project you can see a progression of intensity and energy in which the three stages overlap and intermingle, primarily because different individuals on the team sequence through the stages at their own paces. But even with the blurring of precise distinctions, we can still see the gestalt.