Release Management/Goals/2014Q4

Release Management Q4 2014 Goals

<platform> denotes goals that are listed on the platform Q4 goals list

Release Management General

Release Quality - Improve automation / reduce risk of manual errors

• [Lukas] <stretch> [MISSED] Create automated release checklist (maybe based on ship-it)
• [Sylvestre] Fully automate Product-Details (bug 1040759)

• [Sylvestre] Automate manual portions of ship-it
  • pull in recent changesets from tbpl/treeherder (bug 1053814)
  • create new l10n milestone and pull in l10n changesets from dashboard (bug 1035458)
  • [DONE] auto populate partials (bug 1049689)

• [Sylvestre] Automate the publication of Firefox Android
  • [DONE] Use the Google play API to push APK automatically (bug 1045531)
  • [DONE] Use the Google play API to update the locale descriptions (bug 1091469)

Release Quality - Find issues earlier

• [Lukas] Continued work on the Release Readiness Dashboard to reflect accurately the current release schemas
  • Add in ESR
  • Get Firefox Android queries/groups created
  • Include Triage queries
  • Get external data visualized on it - stability/performance metrics so that we can get this public-facing
• [Lawrence] Create checkIID hook to catch required UUID bumps

Communication

• [DONE] [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
  • Proposal published: Release Notes 2.0 proposal
  • Had initial conversations with marketing and Firefox growth team about kicking off project in Q1
• [ON TRACK] [Lawrence] Find ways to improve org's understanding of current tracking and release schedule
  • Created merge/release calendar
  • Held session in Portland about release schedule and process
  • TODO: publish updated documentation about release schedule and process
  • TODO: publish release information on video screens in office
• [all] Continue to refine team wiki

Release Strategy

• [Lawrence] Create release strategy document summarizing plans for improvements to measurement, process, issue mitigation, turnaround time, and automation.

Expand contributor involvement

• [Lukas] <stretch> Define contributor pathways
  • Triage of Desktop, Mobile, B2G, Platform, Services (?) bugs

• [Haseeb] Attend CrashStats Meeting

Firefox Desktop/Mobile

• Manage and coordinate active Firefox and Firefox for Android releases
  • [DONE] [Lawrence] Firefox 32
  • [DONE] [Sylvestre] Firefox 33
  • [Lawrence] Firefox 34
  • [Lukas] Firefox 35
  • [Sylvestre] Firefox 36
• [Lukas] <platform> Throttling improvements - finalize data gathered between FF31-33, implement updated SOP
  • Round 2 of experiments to get within the same week as release
  • This will get a faster uptake on new features in product release - great for press/marketing efforts to get more Mozillians
• [Lukas] <platform> All-Hands potential sessions:
  • Can we get commitments to turning off any intermittent orange tests and then build back up?
  • Getting to Daily Betas - what's left?
  • L10n, the black box and what can we open up to greater understanding?
  • Learning from our mass-chemspill - Port-Mortem and actions to take forward
  • Release Notes & PR - overhaul and creating a high-signal method for generation of our release communications
  • Where are we in the release cycle and what does that mean to you? (dev/qa/pr/other?)
• [Haseeb] Shadow Benjamin on Nightly Triage

Firefox ESR

• [Benjamin] Create plan for mozilla.org changes to better expose ESR
• [Benjamin] Investigate building MSI Installers for ESR
• [Benjamin] Investigate marketing for ESR

Special Projects

• [Lukas] Ascend Project
  • Running the program
  • Prepare metrics (visuals) to help summarize and be able to talk about how Ascend #1 went and what's next

• [Haseeb] Hillhacks
  • Successfully run the hillhacks event

• [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
  • Implement some features in treeherder (like the ETA) bug 1052397

Personal Development

• [DONE] [Lawrence] Learn about Google Analytics
  • Completed Digital Analytics Fundamentals and Google Analytics Platform Principles online courses.
  • Read A/B Testing by Dan Siroker and Pete Koomen
• [Lukas] Back to guitar playing! Get above 80% on at least 2 songs I used to play, and get 2 new songs into the above 80% range
• [Sylvestre] Continue Spanish lessons
• [Benjamin] Take some Banjo classes
• [Haseeb] Focus on communications skill, start reading Agile/Release Management Book