Release Management/Goals/2014Q3

Release Management Q3 2014 Goals

<platform> denotes goals that are listed on the platform Q3 goals list

Release Management General

Release Quality - Improve automation / reduce risk of manual errors

• [Sylvestre] Automate manual portions of ship-it
  • [DONE] build submission emails
  • [DEFER] pull in recent changesets from tbpl/treeherder (bug 1040759)
    • Stalled: the tbpl feature is not complete enough
  • [DEFER] create new l10n milestone and pull in l10n changesets from dashboard (bug 1035458)
    • Stalled: needs some changes on l10n which didn't happen yet
  • [DONE] auto populate branch (tied to version) (bug 1048290)
  • [DEFER] auto populate partials (bug 1049689)
    • Stalled: Waiting for some new features from releng to land to know which partial shipped and which didn't
  • [DONE] determine if dashboard check is useful (bug 1055524)
• [ON TRACK] [Sylvestre] Fully automate Product-Details (bug 1053814)
  • Patches ready. Waiting for review
  • see https://github.com/mozilla/relman-tools/tree/master/auto-pd which is a bit janky because of ftp data pulled (version is not always correct, needs more robust tests before it can be automated)

Release Quality - Find issues earlier

• [Pranav] Release Readiness Dashboard
  • [MISSED] Get dashboard into a state where the team can use it on a daily basis
  • [DONE] Complete implementation of Talos, Telemetry, and Socorro data sources
  • [DONE] Create initial views and indexes for performance and stability
• [Lawrence] Add new repository hooks
  • [MISSED] Create checkIID hook to catch required IIDL bumps
  • [DONE] Create string freeze hook to catch string changes on Aurora and Beta (bug 859358)
    • With thanks to flod
  • [DROPPED] Investigate RIL hook to catch RIL changes on Aurora and later

Communication

• [DONE] [Lukas] Create relman blog release.mozilla.org (bug 1029160)
• [DONE] [Sylvestre] Feed the relman blog with the changelogs
• [DEFER] [Lawrence] <platform> Create Release Notes proposal for a revamped template including formatting, new categories, optional image/video, and handling of point releases
  • This improves public perception of the product and also helps our enterprise sysadmins have the info they need to keep using Firefox in large deployments
• Continue to refine team wiki
  • [Ben] Simplify landing page
  • [Sylvestre, Lawrence] Refine Aurora, Beta, and ESR documentation
    • Release notes & product details
    • Feature uplift
    • Uplift rules
    • Beta release process
    • ESR Landing Process
  • [Ben] Refine team information

Expand contributor involvement

• [DONE] [Lukas] Investigate requirements for new contributors (NDA, sec access)
• [DEFER] [?] Define contributor pathways
  • Triage of Desktop, Mobile, B2G, Platform, Services (?) bugs
  • Didn't have an owner this quarter. Will review use of including this in a later quarter.
• [Ben] Create onboarding documentation for new contributors on wiki including week-by-week breakdown

Firefox Desktop/Mobile

• [DONE] [Lukas] <platform> Continuing ESR
  • [DONE] Finalize if ESR will be ongoing
    • https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.planning/-IQWXs_zEp8
  • [DONE] Devise a plan to manage ESR releases (can this be community based?)
    • Lukas working with bkerensa on managing ESR 31.0.2 release.
• [DONE] [Lukas] <platform> Throttling improvements - continue to collect data for FF31, then implement updated SOP
  • This will get a faster uptake on new features in product release - great for press/marketing efforts to get more Mozillians
  • Update SOP is enable updates for 24 hours at 25%, enable updates for all after 7 days if no significant issues found.
• [DONE] [Sylvestre] Determine whether we can make release-drivers archive public
  • Will not make archives public in the short term. Identified other ways to improve this list that will be tackled in Q4.
• [DONE] [Lawrence] <platform> Create and document process for feature fast tracking
  • Increased user delight, at a more rapid pace, when there are exciting features that could benefit from a specific date/timed release in conjunction with marketing/pr

Firefox OS

• [DONE] [all] Participate in B2G test days
• [DONE] [Bhavana, Lawrence] <platform> Create B2G release model proposals and gather feedback for potential changes in 2.2 cycle
  • Proposals reviewed and new release model being tried with 2.2 release
• [MISSED] [Bhavana] <platform> Figure out what to do with B2G Security Releases

Special Projects

• [Bhavana] Get l10n strings changes going-in for Hindi
• [Bhavana] Take some initiative related to community events, MoZRep involvement
  • Signed up to be a mentor for TechWomen 2014 (Will know by July end if that works out)
• [DONE] [Lukas] Ascend Project
  • develop curriculum
  • select participants for first pilot
  • launch first pilot
• [Sylvestre] Testing
  • Get test suite to green by separating oranges and creating a strategy to determine if a reported orange failure is a real failure
  • Incorporate C++ coverage report in builds bug 890116
  • Incorporate static analyzer in builds and report on diffs
  • Better tests
  • Coding style
  • Improve documentation/usability of the various tests bug 1050715, bug 1051987, bug 1051508
  • Status: various changes are happening in parallel, for example: Structured Logging
• [DONE] [Lawrence] Determine next steps for Manager Hacking program
  • Manager Hacking is on hold as people team is development manager education that should replace this program.

Personal Development

• [Bhavana]
• [MISSED] [Lawrence] Continue French lessons with DuoLingo, achieve level 10 (currently level 8)
• [DONE] [Lukas] Reading as many books (in their entirety) as possible on this vacation (previous vacation reached 8) - Totally read at least 12 books this time!
• [DONE] [Sylvestre] Release a baby!
• [Benjamin] Kick Off Reading Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, Third Edition