[sakai2-tcc] IMPORTANT: Help needed for 2.8

[Nate Angell]

Seth:

Thanks for bringing these needs to our attention. As you may know
through other channels, some of us have been at work organizing some
events and resources to try to bring more people and focused attention
to functional QA, which you identify as a need in your message.
Ideally we would have initiated this effort earlier, but identifying
the need, the best approach to meet it, and aligning resources to
address it took some time. We hope to have a positive effect on the
2.8 release and establish some practices that can be carried forward
for future releases. We welcome the support and suggestions of the
whole TCC and larger community. Rob Egan's post announcing the effort
follows.

- Nate

<snip>
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rob Egan <Rob.Egan at marist.edu>
Date: Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 4:50 PM
Subject: Help test the next Sakai community release!
To: announcements at collab.sakaiproject.org,
sakai-user at collab.sakaiproject.org, pedagogy at collab.sakaiproject.org,
sakai-qa at collab.sakaiproject.org


Dear Sakai Collaborators,

Would you like to get more involved with the Sakai community and have
a direct impact on Sakai? If so, consider contributing to testing
efforts now underway for release 2.8 of community Sakai by becoming a
functional tester. Whether you’re an administrator, instructor,
student, or technologist, if you can use Sakai, you can help!

To help you join the effort, the community has organized a free
kick-off webinar that will explain the testing process, show you where
to go to get started, how to gain access to test Sakai instances,
scripts to follow and other resources, and walk you through on how to
submit your test results into the Sakai community issue tracking
system. Sakai QA expert Corey McGarrahan from rSmart will lead the
webinar.

Wednesday, Jan 19, 2011 10:00AM-12:00PM PST
Register for the free webinar now:
https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/523635654

Functional testers—new comers and old hands—will then also join
together in a series of functional testing "fests" to test different
areas of the Sakai 2.8 release. Current test fests are scheduled for
10AM EST on 20 and 27 Jan 2011, but more may be organized. Stay tuned
to the Sakai QA Working Group wiki home page for more information
about this effort and scheduled test fests.
http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/QA/Home

This effort is the result of a close collaboration between myself, as
a volunteer to coordinate the 2.8 functional testing effort, Alan
Berg, Sakai Foundation QA Director, Anthony Whyte, Sakai Foundation
Release Manager, and Corey McGarrahan and Nate Angell, rSmart, along
with other Sakai community QA volunteers. We welcome any and all
community members who can join us in communicating about and
participating in this important effort.

Sincerely,
Rob Egan
Support Specialist, Academic Technology & eLearning
Marist College
Library 305
Poughkeepsie, NY 12601
(845) 575-3590
Email: Rob.Egan at marist.edu
</snip>

On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 12:13 PM, Seth Theriault <slt at columbia.edu> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> This is important, so please read it carefully.
>
> There is an ongoing discussion among the Release Management folks
> about revising the date for the first 2.8.0-rc01 release
> candidate (currently next Tuesday, 11 January 2011). This is
> because of the presence of a number of blocker issues and a
> concern that too few QA resources have been volunteered in
> support of functional testing.
>
> While no decision or recommendation has been made, it seems clear
> that 2.8 continues to struggle for any number of reasons and that
> any delay in the release of an RC tag could endanger the current
> 1 March 2011 target date.
>
> As such, we need your help to release 2.8 in a timely fashion.
> Some concrete ways to help include:
>
> - If you are a tool or project lead, please verify that all bugs
>  and approved features that are supposed to appear in the 2.8
>  release are actually there. If you have specific test plans or
>  the like, make them public. If you have SQL conversions, make
>  sure they are the Jira tickets are marked.
>
> - If you know of or direct QA resources, we need to muster them.
>  Please coordinate with Alan Berg to find out where the greatest
>  need exists.
>
> - Review the current 2.8 critical+blocker list and if you have
>  expertise on any of these or can provide help, make yourself
>  known:
>
> https://jira.sakaiproject.org/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=12539
>
> - Volunteer to help out with the release notes, verify conversion
> scripts, etc.
>
> Again, getting the a good-quality 2.8 release out the door will
> allow the TCC to continue its work for 2.9 and the outstanding
> maintenance releases.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Seth
>
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