[Framework-Team] Re: Release roadmap for 3.0

[Martin Aspeli]

Hanno Schlichting <plone at ...> writes:

> Right, we probably don't need it. I guess I was somehow trying to
> preserve my SoC dates ;)

That in itself isn't a bad idea - we now suddenly have 10 (hopefully) paid
developers doing work for us under the guidance of more (except in the cases of
yourself and Stephan) senior developers. I suggest we take advantage of it and
give them the guidance they need!

> The roadmap is based on our experience with Plone 2.5 and therefore
> still optimistic, as 2.5 was quite limited in scope. But I really hope
> that our new process will prevent us from getting a 2.1-like roadmap
> which would be something like a six months alpha period and a
> full-year-long beta period ;)

Amen. I think the processes put in place by the last framework team went a long
way towards giving us a way to avoid that. Review bundles are by far the best
idea anyone's had when it comes to Plone release management for a long time. :)
 
> I should note that I this is nothing more than a proposal and I know
> that the decision is made by the release manager (except for the
> proposal freeze). But I felt that there are quite some different
> opinions out there about the scope of Plone 3.0 and we could more easily
> agree on something like a concrete full-blown roadmap instead of just a
> proposal freeze or having discussions about the various motives that
> influence how we would like the roadmap to look like. It's all about
> dates in the end anyways ;)

Indeed. We do of course have a tool for all this - plone.org/roadmap. We can
start assigning PLIPs to future releases, for example, and we should be better
at using the state of the PLIPs to view how they're progressing.

I think now may be a good time to start (continue?) beating the drum about 3.0
for the Archipelago sprinters. Give them *plenty* of time to see the deadlines
coming. In the first instance, everyone who's interested at least need to
understand that they have a bundle submit date to aim for.

Perhaps we could also offer a few more intermediary targets, e.g. a soft submit
date (we'd like to see it by this date, but the second date two weeks later is
OK), and an earlier date where we expect people to have their branches in place
so that others who are interested in helping to get a particular bundle ready
for review have a clear place to start from.

Certainly, I work better to a few deadlines and reminders than some abstract
date some time in the future.

> On top we have to put a message out, so that people know when they
> should reserve some time if they want to get features into Plone 3.0 and
> for us to have some understanding about the one month where we have to
> review all those things and therefore ideally shouldn't be on vacation
> all the time or have a client project deadline in the middle of it. Plus
> a clear statement for all our users and integrators to plan ahead for
> upgrades or when to deploy based on 3.0.

Couldn't agree more!

Thanks for picking up on this Hanno, as usual you keep the machine humming. :)

Martin