2.8. Versioning#

2.8.1. Why Versions Matter#

We hope Better Conversations is a simple to deliver and delightful to attend.

One reason for this is that we’ve done a lot of work to figure out what works and write it down in great detail. This leads to something that can be delivered reliably ensuring a quality experience for everyone involved.

We want to keep improving; the course has changed a lot over the years thanks to the contributions of many people. All those suggestions and observations really do help make the course better.

However, people are building their business on this and we owe them a consistent, stable platform to work from. If we just changed stuff randomly it would cause a lot of anxiety and frustration.

So we’re going to be very clear about the versions of the course. This approach is well proven in other areas and we hope it’ll help us both improve and innovate whilst also allowing others to build on what we’ve done.

2.8.2. Versioning Policy#

Everything we publish on this site will have a version number in the filename. This number takes the form X.Y.Z e.g.

  • “BCO Master Flight Plan v1.0 Module 1.2.3 docx”

  • “BCO Handbook v1.4.pdf”

The major version in this case is version 1. This represents significant changes to the file. Any file with the same major version number is compatible with any other. So you could use a v1.2.3 flight plan with a v1.4 handbook.

We’ll also make minor improvements to things such as formatting, readability, diagrams etc. These changes will be released as minor versions where the minor version is the Y in vX.Y.Z.

Some changes might only require small adjustments, for example fixing typos. There’s no need to change the major or minor version for this. These will be released as a patch where the patch version is the Z in vX.Y.Z.

Occasionally we might need to issue a new version not because the course content has changed but because are working on the flightplan tooling or course delivery system. In which case we’ll add a letter at the end e.g. v3.0.1a. This indicates there’s no change to the content. You should use the latest version available and generally we’ll withdraw earlier versions of that specific version.

Testing new material#

If you are working with us on testing new material, you may also come across a pre-release version. These will be marked with a -alpha or -beta suffix, e.g. v1.2.3-alpha. We will not be publishing these versions as they are only for testing.

Translations#

We are developing translated versions of the course. These will be marked with a suffix indicating the language code and country code, e.g. v1.2.3-en-GB indicates that the file is in English with British spellings, v1.2.3-nl-NL indicates that the file is in Dutch (nl) as used in The Netherlands (NL).

You don’t have to move to the latest versions of things but you might want to.

2.8.3. Support Policy#

Currently we’re on version 3 of Better Conversations.

Our policy is:

  • We will release new major versions every 6 months or so

  • We will support a major version for 12 months after release

  • We will release minor versions as needed

What this means is if you want to stay current with the Foundation’s support of Better Conversations, you will need to update what you do every 6 - 12 months.

If you are an Associate, you can do what you want but all the material on this site, and discussion forums will be focused on the past 2 versions of the course, e.g. what’s happened in the past year.

If you are a Partner we expect you to be delivering the current or last major version.