On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 7:24 AM, Jürgen Schmidt <jogischm...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > AOO 3.4.1 was our second release and I would like to do some reflection > of the past and especially the hot phase in the end where we tried to > finalize the version. Things that were not so good and that can and > should be improved in the future. I am looking for general remarks and > feedback from people who were involved in this release process and who > were affected in one or the other way. > > I would like to start first with some brainstorming and have created a > wiki page [1] to collect the outcome of this brainstorming and > reflection. This will hopefully help us to avoid mistakes for future > releases. It can hopefully also help to identify gaps that we have and > where we should focus a little bit more to close these gaps. >
I put some comments on the wiki, but it looks like not much out there from others. A few quick thoughts to stimulate some more ideas. To publish Apache OpenOffice requires two kinds of tasks: 1) Routine, repetitive, time consuming, not-fun work. 2) Fun, exciting, creative work. Some of this varies by the individual. For some, debugging is a pain. For others it might be an adventure. Perhaps it depends on whether you are debugging your own code or not ;-) In any case, I think the project grows to the extent we can increase the ratio of fun work to not-fun work. This makes it overall more fun for us and helps us attract more volunteers. The most direct way to improve this ratio is to reduce the amount of time we spend doing it, by automation or other means of increasing efficiency. Examples of time-consuming, repetitive, non-fun work might be: 1) Building AOO 2) Coordinating and posting a RC 3) Explaining the same things over and over again, whether to users or to other project volunteers 4) Release requirements checking on each release Perhaps other similar tasks and embedded processes come to mind. If we think of this as a process of continual refinement and optimization, we would identify how can improve on items like this. In fact, from what I hear, more discussions of improving the build, making more use of build bots, etc., we're heading in the right direction. I read a good quote yesterday that is somewhat relevant, by Alfred North Whitehead: "It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle — they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments." I think the same is true of software development. Our probably today is we have too much that requires thought and not enough that happens automatically. We don't have a lot of "fresh horses". So we need to concentrate our efforts on where they make the most difference. This, at the same, is the stuff that is most fun. -Rob > [1] > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/AOO+3.4.1+Reflection+and+Review
