abstract

the release team for ubuntu has incorporated new tools to track development progress during the cycle. These tools also track the derivative (or flavour) progress as well.

it would be beneficial for ubuntu studio should integrate with the release team's procedures. doing so would help the ubuntu studio team organize for each cycle, develop accountability by tracking progress, and provide a forum for help when our progress is blocked by another team or entity.

therefore, the purpose of this document is to describe the release teams procedures and tools, and how ubuntu studio will integrate with them.

release team procedure

this will be described in four topics; process, status, burn down, and format

process

at the beginning of the cycle (TODO: establish approximate week or date) teams (including derivative teams) create blueprints for improvement, fixes, or feature addition goals for that cycle. a list of the blueprints are then submitted to the release manager, kate stewart (ircnick: skaet).

the release manager will evaluate the blueprints and has sole discretion to approve, suggest changes, or reject the blueprints for tracking during that cycle. rejecting a blueprint does not mean the team cannot work on the blueprint, it will just not be tracked by the release manager and team.

the release manager then creates a "header" blueprint for each team for that cycle and sets the approved team submitted blueprints as dependencies to the "header" blueprint. this effectively binds the approved team blueprints to the release manager's "header" blueprint and thus provides the mechanism to track them.

automated tools will then scrub through the team blueprints attached to the release manager "header" blueprints aggregating the information to generate "burn down" charts and progress bars.

status

status.ubuntu.com is the main tracking tool for the release manager, which gives an overall snapshot of the development cycle progress. it shows an overall view of the progress plus a breakout for each team.

for more explanation about the status.ubuntu.com website and how it tracks progress, please see the status.ubuntu.com about page.

burn down

the community-universe-ftbfs blueprint is a good example of a team's burn down chart. ideally you would see the "TODO" list "burn down", following the thick black line as things are completed and marked as "DONE".

for more information, see this wikipedia article on burn down charts.

format

each blueprint requires a certain area be formatted properly with "work items" for its progress to be tracked. the "whiteboard" area is used for this purpose. the status.ubuntu.com work items page contains the full specification for formatting.

An example of a properly formatted whiteboard for work items see the karmic desktop blueprint for network ui.

integration

the ubuntu studio team has a web page for preliminary release planning: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/ReleasePlanning

after the team has reviewed the scope of the preliminary release plan the group should form a consensus if the plan addresses required issues without being too large in scope to complete in a given cycle.

blueprints can be made as required for the different topics, although some may be grouped together in a single blueprint (e.g. updating theme, icons, UI, and lightdm theme may all be placed under a single "update theming" blueprint).

a list of desired blueprints will then be emailed to the release manager for approval. the release manager will then attach approved blueprints to a single, new blueprint.