-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Hi Team
I've spent some time with various members of the Ubuntu Server Team over the last few weeks reviewing how we use blueprints to track progress during the development cycle. This was really with the objective of trying to resolve a few challenges that we have with current usage: 1) It's often hard to evaluate exactly when a blueprint has been completed. 2) We sometimes have challenges with understanding the use cases for work. 3) What the overall goal is for a blueprint is not always clear. 4) Endeavouring to bake QA into all work we do. When I first started contributing to Ubuntu we did try to write specifications associated with each blueprint (see [0] for the template). I think that this approach did not work that well - often the spec did not get updated throughout the cycle as the primary focus is normally on work item tracking in the blueprint - so they age and become pretty useless very quickly. That said there are a few concepts in the specification template that I think would still benefit our use of blueprints. So I'd like to propose bringing in some of the concepts we had in specs to the blueprint summary and whiteboard. 1) Blueprint Summary Rationale: One or two paragraph statement about why we are doing this blueprint. Goal: Overall goal for the blueprint. 2) Blueprint Whiteboard User Stories: User stories really help thrash our what the requirements are and why we are actually doing the work. They should try and encompass how you think the output of the blueprint will be used by real people. There may of course be multiple stories for more complicated work. Assumptions: What assumptions are being made about the delivery of the blueprint. Test Plans: This is really about validating user stories; I find its helpful to think about these as high level processes - then they can either be hand cranked by people who want to try stuff out or do manual QA OR they can be automated. ..or they might even be covered by existing automated test cases. Release Note: One or more suitable statements that could be included in the release note for the release associated with the blueprint. I've worked this into one of the blueprints that I will be driving this release which is a) simple and b) already well defined - see [1]. So a few comments about the above: 1) Its not going to fit every blueprint we write - but I think it should cover most of them! 2) I think that having everything in the blueprint will help with keeping it up-to-date as its the place we all go to see what needs to be done. 3) Interested people only have to subscribe in one place and they can then see when stuff is updated. Has anyone ever subscribed to a spec in the wiki? 4) The original Specification template also included a section for 'Design' - I personally think that Design should really live past the lifetime of a single blueprint and should be delivered as documentation - probably in the wiki - and referenced from the blueprint. I will be doing this for my blueprints this cycle - it would be great if other people could try this out as well as they write up their blueprints from sessions at UDS. One feature that is currently lacking in the whiteboard is the ability to track changes over time (although you could do this through diligent monitoring of blueprint email spam). Its possible that we might start managing the whiteboard content in a bzr branch and updating the blueprint periodically - but that's still work in progress. Cheers James [0] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SpecSpec [1] https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/servercloud-q-tomcat7 - -- James Page Ubuntu Core Developer -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJPs2aUAAoJEL/srsug59jDg2wQALfgoz/9BX7WrT7mDqexXDbY 4XA9aMjuVrbMIOgh4/qGN0eGPrGdbxBpOWCYeGphoXdYeaEp9D9VXsH/bywVYjHn VVlfgo2ewar/wRIOHNXG+JWDLrHLhDUxLSywEof4g/5UPl3ybRjyr72U3eTZ2RCv VS6OHd4MchBfl/CF+ZyyIaraFQxLBskXxh8AsLDj4eBrpiwopaYnTddcOLvAUkXH jxhHbXeLX6I6RgUIbVpVHhnnWBSf72EvXue39g4+pxy/rjgBY9LIxUk6iBAMiRIN Wo6sLUHG+Ibg/k8w50sCPPSMpObHbqVStWGb5gcejUrScpsSsv//u8tYYtYkLtJi owcIjzj8pDLIdQY0L0NWpzs/+KN3jXRYJATX9/5eLc1Dm9qWnv5gW6iF/0GqHMs0 tgB1rxq5mMIDyG35e7SLedB/mZkV6/OO/vZl6dw0FtPGyuxFf4bEeUR+49AkORUR 63tch+nNoRkjPMe93SKZrhiSIvcf5837Q6kWu9ZLlvUDgpv0xmwSoDcPjs+6hdZJ uMyUYlRTtdRBsHiVLEYC3EJCYES+AGjnb2hJmEz7PDxvyJITwPLqRnxotTSY4FKl WqOBCU2v18VA4IEjLOM+kYq022Sh+Pco+JUk0BNL6TzaI0TzZml7mGkhzP9tnIE1 cverNrgeB8j05pM7BVaX =I+IH -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ubuntu-server mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam
