Release early, release often(Re: Using Jira and branches for Project Management)

[Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org>]

Diwaker Gupta wrote:

...

> IMHO, we do not practice "release early, release often", often enough :) This 
> has been mentioned on the list before (see [1], [2]), however I don't think 
> it has actually seeped into our development just as yet.
> 
> [1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.text.xml.forrest.devel/14805/
> [2] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.text.xml.forrest.devel/11665/
> 
> Take a look at our release durations:
> o 0.2 -> 0.3 : 2 months
> o 0.3 -> 0.4 : 1 month
> o 0.4 -> 0.5 : 7 months
> o 0.5 -> 0.6 : 1 YEAR
> o 0.6 -> 0.7 : 8 months
> o 0.7 -> 0.8 : 2 months and counting...
> 
> I just think that releasing as soon as we have some set of self contained 
> features in is a good idea. It gives confidence to the users that all is well 
> -- I mean what the end user usually sees are "releases".


I think we are all in agreement with this. So lets plan a 0.8 milestone 
1 release. On one of the major features in 0.8 will be Locationmaps. 
These are working now and Tim just enabled locationmap mounting which 
allows us to use them within Forrest itself. We also have the new seed 
system which is pretty significant (although Thorsten needs to resolve 
the vote he called). I propose the following tasks for the 0.8M1 release:

- Provide a Forrest locationmap to simplify the existing forrest sitemaps.

- Provide better documentation for the locationmap
   - locationmap in seed

- Finalise and document the new seed system

- Solve the performance issues that have resulted form the Cocoon upgrade.

Lets be careful about adding more stuff into this early release, that 
will only serve to delay the release too much.

----

We can then start looking at 0.8M2 which should focus on forrest:views. 
Thosten already spent some time prioritising stuff we discussed at 
ApacheCon so we are well on our way to identifying the reqruiements for 
0.8M2

----

I'll start setting up Jira with these goals and assign sub tasks as per 
our discussion on using Jira (unless there are objections of course, 
I'll track this thread to keep things in line in Jira). It would be 
really nice if we had some documentation come out of that thread in time 
for a 0.8M1 release as well.

Ross

Re: Release early, release often(Re: Using Jira and branches for Project Management)

[Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org>]

Tim Williams wrote:
> On 8/16/05, Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org> wrote:
> 
>>David Crossley wrote:
>>
>>>Ross Gardler wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Diwaker Gupta wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>IMHO, we do not practice "release early, release often", often enough :)
>>>
>>>[ snip ]
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>I think we are all in agreement with this. So lets plan a 0.8 milestone
>>>>1 release. On one of the major features in 0.8 will be Locationmaps.
>>>
>>>
>>>What is meant by a "milestone" release, and why not just call
>>>it 0.8 final? Then get on with 0.9 which will be forrest:views.
>>>I do not see the need for this M1 and M2 stuff.
>>
>>That is fine by me as long as it doesn't upset the forrest:views people.
>>I don't want to  give the impression that I'm proposing pushing
>>forrest:views back.
>>
>>Mind you since locationmap was originally committed during the 0.5
>>development cycle it's release is overdue a little more than
>>forrest:views ;-)
>>
>>Are others OK with doing a 0.8 with the locationmap and doing a 0.9 with
>>forrest:views?
> 
> 
> I gather this is a departure from the suggestion the other day that a
> release is cooked when 0 or few issues left in JIRA?  

Well I was a little unclear about this statement. David partially 
clarified what I intended to say. The truth is we sometimes reduce the 
count to 0 by reassigning issues to later releases.

I think the point is that at present we do not classify our issues well. 
We tend to lump them into a fix version without considering their impact 
on the overall strategy of Forrest development.

We also don't give enough priority to bugs in existing functionality, 
you can see this in the fact that my suggested milestones don't mention 
bugs that should be fixed for 0.8 (this needs addressing)

> I'm not sure
> what features should qualify for a new release but locationmap seems
> to be widely useful or visible so I'm not sure that it rates the
> distinction of a "key feature" driving the release.  I don't have a
> problem with it, just think this is a lot like having a release for
> code refactoring -- (i.e., not much for a user to get excited about).

Actually, I disagree. The locationmap enables a whole range of 
functionality that was not possible before. It is not just the ability 
to improve our xmap structure. We can now retrieve content from multiple 
  sources. We no longer limit the client URL space to the document 
structure defined within Forrest and we can now create multiple sites 
structures from the same content sources.

I do see it as a fundamental improvement in functionality. It might be I 
am the only one with these use cases, but I have proposed a number of 
talks at ApacheCon that I could not have done without Locationmap. I 
believe there is a wider use base or this functionality.

Ross

Ross

Re: Release early, release often(Re: Using Jira and branches for Project Management)

[Tim Williams <wi...@gmail.com>]

On 8/16/05, Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org> wrote:
> David Crossley wrote:
> > Ross Gardler wrote:
> >
> >>Diwaker Gupta wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>IMHO, we do not practice "release early, release often", often enough :)
> >
> > [ snip ]
> >
> >
> >>I think we are all in agreement with this. So lets plan a 0.8 milestone
> >>1 release. On one of the major features in 0.8 will be Locationmaps.
> >
> >
> > What is meant by a "milestone" release, and why not just call
> > it 0.8 final? Then get on with 0.9 which will be forrest:views.
> > I do not see the need for this M1 and M2 stuff.
> 
> That is fine by me as long as it doesn't upset the forrest:views people.
> I don't want to  give the impression that I'm proposing pushing
> forrest:views back.
> 
> Mind you since locationmap was originally committed during the 0.5
> development cycle it's release is overdue a little more than
> forrest:views ;-)
> 
> Are others OK with doing a 0.8 with the locationmap and doing a 0.9 with
> forrest:views?

I gather this is a departure from the suggestion the other day that a
release is cooked when 0 or few issues left in JIRA?  I'm not sure
what features should qualify for a new release but locationmap seems
to be widely useful or visible so I'm not sure that it rates the
distinction of a "key feature" driving the release.  I don't have a
problem with it, just think this is a lot like having a release for
code refactoring -- (i.e., not much for a user to get excited about).
--tim

Re: Release early, release often(Re: Using Jira and branches for Project Management)

[Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org>]

David Crossley wrote:
> Ross Gardler wrote:
> 
>>Diwaker Gupta wrote:
>>
>>
>>>IMHO, we do not practice "release early, release often", often enough :) 
> 
> [ snip ]
> 
> 
>>I think we are all in agreement with this. So lets plan a 0.8 milestone 
>>1 release. On one of the major features in 0.8 will be Locationmaps. 
> 
> 
> What is meant by a "milestone" release, and why not just call
> it 0.8 final? Then get on with 0.9 which will be forrest:views.
> I do not see the need for this M1 and M2 stuff.

That is fine by me as long as it doesn't upset the forrest:views people. 
I don't want to  give the impression that I'm proposing pushing 
forrest:views back.

Mind you since locationmap was originally committed during the 0.5 
development cycle it's release is overdue a little more than 
forrest:views ;-)

Are others OK with doing a 0.8 with the locationmap and doing a 0.9 with 
forrest:views?

Ross

Ross

Re: Release early, release often(Re: Using Jira and branches for Project Management)

[David Crossley <cr...@apache.org>]

Ross Gardler wrote:
> Diwaker Gupta wrote:
> 
> >IMHO, we do not practice "release early, release often", often enough :) 
[ snip ]

> I think we are all in agreement with this. So lets plan a 0.8 milestone 
> 1 release. On one of the major features in 0.8 will be Locationmaps. 

What is meant by a "milestone" release, and why not just call
it 0.8 final? Then get on with 0.9 which will be forrest:views.
I do not see the need for this M1 and M2 stuff.

-David

Re: Release early, release often(Re: Using Jira and branches for Project Management)

[Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org>]

Ross Gardler wrote:
> Diwaker Gupta wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
>> IMHO, we do not practice "release early, release often", often enough 
>> :) This has been mentioned on the list before (see [1], [2]), however 
>> I don't think it has actually seeped into our development just as yet.
>>
>> [1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.text.xml.forrest.devel/14805/
>> [2] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.text.xml.forrest.devel/11665/
>>
>> Take a look at our release durations:
>> o 0.2 -> 0.3 : 2 months
>> o 0.3 -> 0.4 : 1 month
>> o 0.4 -> 0.5 : 7 months
>> o 0.5 -> 0.6 : 1 YEAR
>> o 0.6 -> 0.7 : 8 months
>> o 0.7 -> 0.8 : 2 months and counting...
>>
>> I just think that releasing as soon as we have some set of self 
>> contained features in is a good idea. It gives confidence to the users 
>> that all is well -- I mean what the end user usually sees are "releases".
> 
> 
> 
> I think we are all in agreement with this. So lets plan a 0.8 milestone 
> 1 release. On one of the major features in 0.8 will be Locationmaps. 
> These are working now and Tim just enabled locationmap mounting which 
> allows us to use them within Forrest itself. We also have the new seed 
> system which is pretty significant (although Thorsten needs to resolve 
> the vote he called). I propose the following tasks for the 0.8M1 release:
> 
> - Provide a Forrest locationmap to simplify the existing forrest sitemaps.
> 
> - Provide better documentation for the locationmap
>   - locationmap in seed
> 
> - Finalise and document the new seed system
> 
> - Solve the performance issues that have resulted form the Cocoon upgrade.
> 
> Lets be careful about adding more stuff into this early release, that 
> will only serve to delay the release too much.
> 
> ----
> 
> We can then start looking at 0.8M2 which should focus on forrest:views. 
> Thosten already spent some time prioritising stuff we discussed at 
> ApacheCon so we are well on our way to identifying the reqruiements for 
> 0.8M2
> 
> ----
> 
> I'll start setting up Jira with these goals and assign sub tasks as per 
> our discussion on using Jira (unless there are objections of course, 
> I'll track this thread to keep things in line in Jira).

I best clarify this, I mean link issues appropriately, I do *not* mean I 
intend to assign tasks to people - I hope that was obvious ;-)

Ross