Microsoft announces Agile driven release cycles for Dynamics CRM 2011

For those who survived CRM 3.0, learned to thrive in 4.0, and who’s hopes were somewhat dashed with the release of 2011 there appears to be some good news (unless you are Salesforce).   As part of Microsoft’s effort to drive the direction of CRM systems and especially the expansion of these systems into enterprise wide use they have announced the significant compression of development cycle times. 

Historically Microsoft has released CRM versions every 2-3 years and major updates every 6 months to one year.  Now Microsoft is attempting to match the release cycles of Salesforce and Sugar CRM with major updates twice yearly.

If the term Agile, as used in this statement of direction, is actually the movement toward Agile software development management practices by the Dynamics CRM team we may see Microsoft realize even faster release cycles in the future.