Software News May Be Better Late
Nearly every major software company has fallen behind schedule at one time or another in delivering a new program. In fact, new software is delayed so often that the trade press considers it newsworthy when a major program is shipped on time. And an industry newsletter, PC Letter, maintains a running list of overdue software, dubbed “vaporware.”
Microsoft was two years late when it finally shipped Windows, a graphics-based operating environment that allows you to run more than one program at a time. Ovation, a highly touted integrated program, was featured on the cover of a major computer magazine, yet never even made it to market.
And now Lotus Development Corp. has announced a third delay in the delivery of its long-awaited, upgraded 1-2-3 spreadsheet program, which is used to perform financial or mathematical calculations on IBM PCs and compatible machines.
Why are there so many delays? It’s simply because producing or revising good software is a cumbersome, complicated process. First a company has to “spec out” a product by determining what customers want by responding to what reviewers have said about previous versions and by evaluating the competition.
New Ideas
Once the programmers have a working model, copies are passed around the company for the first “alpha tests.” The testers report bugs, design flaws and limitations. Then the program is released to a sampling of real users for “beta testing.” Inevitably, more bugs are found.
What’s more, testers, programmers and people within the company keep coming up with ideas for new features. While this is happening, it’s not uncommon for competitive products to be announced or released. Responding sometimes requires additional design changes.
With Lotus’ upcoming program, Lotus 1-2-3 Release 3, there are additional complications. First, Lotus opted to completely rewrite the software in the “C” programming language rather than to modify the existing assembly language code. By writing 1-2-3 in that language, it will be easier for the company to issue modified software that runs on other machines such as IBM mainframes, Unix workstations or Apple Macintoshes, according to Lotus spokesman James O’Donnell.
Also, 1-2-3 is being designed to operate both under the DOS and Microsoft’s new OS/2 operating systems. OS/2 itself is undergoing revisions. Creating a program to run under two operating systems is no easy task, especially when that program, by some estimates, has more than 250,000 lines of programming code.
There are more than 100 people working on the 1-2-3 revision, according to Lotus spokeswoman Susan Earabino. The original version of 1-2-3 was written by a small group of highly motivated programmers, headed by company founder, Mitchell Kapor.
Another problem is living up to the company’s commitment to maintain compatibility with the older version of the program. When the company interviewed corporate users about how the new program should operate, the most common response was “don’t change a thing,” Earabino said. “Yet when presented with a list of possible features, they wanted them all included.”
Maintaining compatibility with the older version means more than just being able to read data from old worksheets. The new version must also run the “macros,” or mini-programs that users write to automate their 1-2-3 worksheets.
Lotus also must maintain the same commands so that users don’t have to learn how to use an entirely new product. Finally, the program must be able to work on a vast array of IBM compatibles with an ever-growing number of printers, disk drives, monitors and other accessories.
Lotus’ upcoming product was announced in April, 1987, for an early 1988 release. Later on, it was rescheduled for spring, 1988, and then pushed back until fall. Lotus is now saying that the product will be ready sometime before the end of the year. There are about 7 million Lotus 1-2-3 users, according to company estimates.
The upgrade is necessary for Lotus to remain competitive and to hold onto its customers. Microsoft’s Excel and Borland International’s Quatro programs are nipping at 1-2-3’s heels with more up-to-date features than the aging current release of 1-2-3. In addition, both programs offer the ability to read and create 1-2-3 compatible spreadsheets, offering 1-2-3 users who are willing to defect from Lotus a way to upgrade their software.
1-2-3’s main component is an electronic spreadsheet where users enter numbers and formulas in intersecting rows and columns. When you change a number in one spot, all the other spreadsheet numbers affected by that change are recalculated accordingly. It also offers database management functions for organizing lists and it has the ability to produce business graphics, based on the numbers in the spreadsheet.
Royal Farros, chairman of T/Maker Co. of Mountain View, Calif., understands Lotus’ problems. His company is now late on shipping WriteNow II, a revision of its popular Macintosh word processing program. Creating or revising a program, according to Farros, can be like “finding your way through a giant maze.”
Even in the final development stages, his programmers are responding to market pressures. “We get close to shipping and people are saying we need word count, paragraph count and other features. It becomes a competitive necessity to bump up our offering,” Farros said.
Keeping Secrets
And there are the unpredictables. Programmers get sick, take vacations or stumble into technical obstacles that can’t be solved quickly.
One way to avoid disappointing customers would be to keep a product secret until it is ready to ship. Some companies do that, but there are reasons to tantalize customers with visions of new features, even if the product is months from being ready.
Pete Peterson, executive vice president of WordPerfect Corp., issued an early announcement for WordPerfect 5.0, which ultimately became available this summer, several months behind schedule. WordPerfect has long dominated the word processing market but was facing increased competition from Microsoft, which had just released a updated version of its word processing program.
“It’s a ferocious competition,” Peterson said. “People will pre-announce products to postpone (customers’) buying decisions. Microsoft Word came out with 4.0 and it had certain things that were good. We pre-announced 5.0 and gained market share.”
Lotus’ Earabino said her company’s announcements were not aimed at preempting competition but rather to give its large corporate customers time to evaluate whether to upgrade. In the future, she said, Lotus will provide confidential briefings to its large customers but will withhold public announcements until a product is nearly ready to ship.
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