[WG: Sakai QA] Release Process Proposal

Clay Fenlason clay.fenlason at et.gatech.edu
Wed Jul 29 17:45:00 PDT 2009


Just a reminder that I'm looking for comment through the end of this
week, and if there remain no objections, plan to press ahead as
outlined in the proposal.

~Clay

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 3:43 PM, Clay
Fenlason<clay.fenlason at et.gatech.edu> wrote:
> After having a couple conversations offline, it sounded to me like it
> wasn't hard to get the wrong idea about the notion of the release
> management team, so I'm going to hunt for some better language, but I
> thought I'd do that by thinking out loud in this thread.
>
> The main purpose of the close collaboration of the product manager and
> this formal release team ahead of code freeze is, in my view, to
> develop an achievable plan for release management and testing. It's to
> survey all the development work on the table, get a sense of what the
> associated risks are, see that they have time to be adequately tested,
> documented, and lead to a solid release.  But the focus is on devising
> a credible plan and publishing it for the community ahead of time, not
> on approving or rejecting development work.
>
> Now, if it turns out that a credible plan is impossible in a given
> timeframe and with the array of new development work on the table,
> then that will have to lead to another conversation which the release
> team isn't going to settle it by fiat.  Its role will be to surface
> this information for a broader consensus to be reached, basically
> saying, "We don't think this can be done, and so we either need to
> look at adding a month or two to the release schedule, or postponing
> some planned features, but something needs to give."  Leaving aside
> the details of what happens then, the important point is that the team
> is meant to bring greater transparency to these issues up front, and
> reduce the risk of surprises well into the process. (As a
> side-benefit, I think the community should get a fairly decent
> projection of "release notes" even before formal QA begins, which
> should put their respective training and support staffs ahead of the
> game)
>
> After code freeze there may be decision points along the way where
> action needs to be taken based on issues of code quality, etc. In such
> instances we don't want a discussion with no clear resolution, nor do
> we want expertise overruled by influence (or whoever happened to show
> up for the call that week).  In my view, we want a technical
> decision-making process like the balance achieved by Apache's
> processes, where consensus is sought, yet which is also bracketed by
> formal mechanisms for reaching resolution. To that extent, then, a
> formal team.
>
> Finally, the initial set of 3 team members is to me still very much
> just a minimal starting point, and I expect the group to grow quickly
> by meritocratic means, where again I think the Apache process has
> useful rules of thumb for expanding this kind of technical governance
> in a meaningful way. The proposal linked to below would task the
> initial 3 members with proposing how they think that should run.
>
> ~Clay
>
> On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 11:20 AM, Clay
> Fenlason<clay.fenlason at et.gatech.edu> wrote:
>> I'd promised a week ago a specific proposal for a release process,
>> building on discussions at the project coordination meetings and
>> on-list [1].  I now have a draft of this proposal on Confluence, which
>> focuses on the release process for 2.x over the next 10-12 months:
>>
>> http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/MGT/Release+Proposal+2009 [2]
>>
>> My plan is to continue to develop/refine this proposal with comment
>> from the community over the course of the next week, and if no
>> 'blocker' disagreements emerge in discussion, I will act to coordinate
>> the 'Next Steps' laid out in the proposal fairly quickly. Some of the
>> details in the proposal can be revised as we go, but I'm eager to get
>> started and allow as much time as possible to follow through on its
>> aims, so I'll urge eveyone to take a close look and offer up questions
>> and comment as soon as they can.
>>
>> ~Clay
>>
>> [1] http://www.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--2.7-Release-Discussion-to24541385.html
>> [2] http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/MGT/Release+Proposal+2009
>>
>


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