Kontrol 2024 outlook: what was, what now, what next?

Having spent most of my career in that type of environment that's probably why I'm a bit more patient and understanding of what's going on, but I will say NI has been forced to be more transparent with the user base about the mistakes they made in the initial release, but from what I can tell are making the appropriate corrections to get things aligned for smaller but more stable releases. But only time will tell at this point.

Yep, I've been in that environment too. The whole of the software development industry is now "all in" on Agile. That's Agile with an uppercase A, which is a thing. But take a drive on You Tube, and you'll start seeing all kinds of content basically saying that "the emperor has no clothes" when it comes to "Agile-capital-A". I knew this about 2 years ago when the company I was working on went "all in" on it too. And it was a miserable failure.

Without proper safeguards in place, the 2-week sprint cycle (which is a major part of "Agile-capital-A") ends up becoming a finger-pointing culture. It's terrible and it makes it VERY difficult to keep staffing levels up because either people are leaving or the line-managers are being told they have to lay off 10%, 20%, or whatever senior leadership has on its mind at the moment. 10% of a PROPERLY sized delivery team is 1 FTE. When you go from 10 to 9, you damage morale in more ways than you ever can imagine. I believe that this is partly what happened to NI.

That's also why I'm less alarmed by release dates slipping as that would indicate a much more thorough and disciplined approach toward stable releases. I'm not a big fan of the "quick fix" releases they initially came up with to get the last batch of things stable. I understood the necessity, but that's not what I'm willing to endure in a full featured next generation release.

In my observation as a technician and as a manager, most humans just are NOT made to wait. That's one reason that the 2-week sprint cycle was invented; it was supposed to give smaller but more frequent feelings in the customer that we're getting something!

But to make that 2 week cycle, you absolutely MUST shrink the number of things you can include in each cycle. NI was trying hard, but nobody seems to figure in the Beta cycle, which does not fit neatly into any 2 week or 3 week release cycle. So the release cycle becomes 5 to 6 weeks even for small releases.

Even if "true Agile-capital-A" was being followed, pretty much everything not in the currently being worked release, will just end up being thrown into the "Backlog-capital-B", which is another thing in Agile-capital-A.

Human nature being what it is, when you tell the customer something in the backlog, that's like saying it's not being planned. Why? BECAUSE HUMANS ARE NOT MADE TO WAIT FOR STUFF.

It doesn't help at all to do bigger releases either! The upcoming release for MIDI Templates (a "big release") is currently (I think) in Beta. So maybe hundreds(?) of people in the Beta will know that, but they're all under NDA and probably can't say anything here in the forums. So it doesn't change public sentiment, and now you have people here in the forums (for weeks now) admitting that they have have lost faith that MIDI Templates are even being worked on, all because it's being talked about now for 3 months (or close to that) and nobody (but the silent Beta team) has seen any deliverables.

So whatever the methodology, "Agile" or "Waterfall", or whatever nomme du jour it may have, humans are NOT made to wait.

I believe that the upsettedness of the customer base will continue until the NI development teams get some wins. That's "wins", plural. MIDI Templates all by itself will not change anybody's mind. We need a string of successes. And we probably deserve a commitment (complete with WORDS and BEHAVIORS) that NI will never let another release farce like KK MK3 happen again. I'm kind of still waiting for that commitment. Haven't seen it yet, but I'm holding out hope.

So of course NI is eating s—t over it as the derserve to. Will I make any difference? I doubt it.

It makes a big difference for anyone who researches before buying. I was reading these forums and the various youtube comments and it completely put me off buying a mk3.

The only reason I eventually got one was because the shop were happy for me to try one out and bring it back if I wasn't happy for any reason. I'm willing to bet there's a whole many more users that either stick with what they have or go buy something else, this must be hurting their potential sales.

However, I think reading all the negativity is why I ended up with a positive experience when I got it in my hands, my expectations were so low. But then I don't 'need' the MIDI Templates, I have a Maschine for Maschine use, and also upgraded from Standard to Ultimate which really opened up the experience for me.

At least NI are engaging with users and attempting to be as transparent as possible, i'd much prefer them to miss certain dates than not own up to issues or give us an idea of the plan moving forwards. So we have to be a little careful with the bashing or they will just go quiet on that front like many other companies.

If they fail to deliver and these plans turn out to be a sneaky sales drive then it's incredibly low, I don't think that will be the case though. I think it's more about changes/resources and the people involved actively do want to see things through to completion.