Hi All, As the RM for the first 5 release I have set a bad example on the release process which I would like to request all of us to consider fixing it. We have a very reasonable high commit activity but we are lagging behind on releases and feeling little disorganized. On a good side we are using JIRA efficiently to capture all issues but we are not using them effectively to plan releases (thanks Ate for the wake up call).
How about we take our agile philosophy [1] literally ? Here is a plan I propose for the releases: * Follow a strict 6-week release cycle? We can take exceptions but they have to be well justified. * 2 weeks JIRA-a-Thon: identify the release features: ** To focus on quality then quantity, focus on only one or two major features (created as epics or stories) ** call out for a virtual to get all get all tasks related to the next release into jira (or tag existing ones to to the release version) ** this the time for the community to respond and make specific requests if they have a burning feature they would like to see in the next release ** free new feature jira tagging to the next release ** advertise the next release notes (there may be more bug fixes added later) * 2 weeks Hack-a-Thon: Run through all the development (added to the 2 weeks of parallel development which happens during JIRA-a-Thon) ** address any deferred issues from previous release ** bug fixes coming through from previous releases ** feature/bug fix freeze ** defer any un-finished issues to next release *1 week Test-a-Thon: Integrations and testing on trunk and 1 RC ** The RC testing among other random testings will need to ensure all advertised release features/bug fixes are properly tested ** improve documentation along with creating release specific documentation * 1 week Release-a-Thon: Fix RC issues, and iterating over and making a release (if all goes well) Spin the cycle applauses, grievances, yellings, welcome !! Cheers, Suresh [1] - http://airavata.apache.org/development/roadmap.html
