Release cadence
How often you put work in front of people, on a rhythm — a fixed interval beats a variable one at almost any size.
Release cadence is the rhythm at which finished work reaches the people it is for: every Tuesday, every second Thursday, the first of the month. The number matters less than the fact that it is fixed.
A fixed interval does two things a variable one cannot. It makes each release smaller, because the date is not moving and the work has to fit — and smaller releases fail smaller, which is the whole of the risk argument. And it removes a recurring decision. "Is this ready?" asked freshly every time is answered by whoever is most anxious in the room, which is why work that is finished sits for weeks. A cadence answers it in advance.
The failure mode is choosing a cadence you can only hit in a good month. A rhythm you break is worse than a slower one you keep, both for the audience and for your own sense of whether the thing is working. Pick the interval you can hold in your worst month, then shorten it when that becomes easy.
Worked: shipping when ready produces four releases in six months, each large and each preceded by a week of nerves. A fortnightly cadence produces twelve, each roughly a third the size, and the two that go wrong are fixed inside a fortnight instead of unwinding a quarter's work.
Also known as
- shipping rhythm
- publishing schedule
Relevant for
- Founders
- A fixed date makes releases smaller, and smaller releases fail smaller — the cadence is a risk control before it is a productivity one.
- Creators
- Pick the schedule you can hold in your worst month, not your best; a rhythm your audience can rely on outperforms a better piece published whenever.