Release letters are useful. No doubt about that.

They are the go-to place for users who want to know what’s new in a software release.

Granted that information is already available in your projects ticket system, but you can’t expect your users to dig through tickets just to be up-to-date.

So you duplicate information. Which is unsatisfying because it creates coupling:

• You copy information from the features and bug fixes from the tickets
• You add links to the ticket system
• You copy the version number
• and you should not forget to enter the right release date shortly before you release

In some of our commercial projects we had this process automated to a high degree. The only thing really missing was translating the tech talk from the tickets into short descriptions that are helpful for your users.

We need to reach that point.