A component stager accepts from developers one or more versions of a component of a product, and associates with each version a time that is one of a number of the periodically recurring times (also called "ticks"), e.g. an upcoming Wednesday, if the periodically recurring times happen on a weekly basis, i.e. every Wednesday. Such associations may be used to identify one or more versions that are associated with a specific tick, e.g. to identify the amount of work done between to ticks and/or to find versions that are currently available for release, which may be based on a most recent tick, or a tick associated with a milestone in the past.