Release Management/Goals/2014Q3

Release Management Q3 2014 Goals

Tie back to general improvement of our products:

• Process created and documented 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
• Finalize if ESR will be ongoing, community RM, ADI & FHR if possible
  • This will serve to get a picture of the # of users we currently are not counting
• 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
• Release Notes proposal for a revamped template - get WebDev resources to do a round on this - also RSS feed for release versions
  • 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

Release Management General

Release Quality - Improve automation / reduce risk of manual errors

• Create automated release checklist
• [Sylvestre] Automate manual portions of ship-it
  • build submission emails
  • pull in recent changesets from tbpl
  • pull in l10n changesets from dashboard
  • auto populate branch (tied to version)
  • auto populate partials
  • determine if dashboard check is useful
• Fully automate Product-Details
  • 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
  • Get dashboard into a state where the team can use it on a daily basis
  • Complete implementation of Talos, Telemetry, and Socorro data sources
  • Create initial views and indexes for performance and stability
• [Lawrence] Add new repository hooks
  • Create checkIID hook to catch required IIDL bumps
  • Create string freeze hook to catch string changes on Aurora and Beta
  • Investigate RIL hook to catch RIL changes on Aurora and later

Communication

• [Sylvestre] Create relman blog release.mozilla.org (bug 1029160)
• 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
  • [Ben] Refine team information

Expand contributor involvement

• [Lukas] Investigate requirements for new contributors (NDA, sec access)
• Define contributor pathways
  • Triage of Desktop, Mobile, B2G, Platform, Services (?) bugs
• [Ben] Create onboarding documentation for new contributors on wiki including week-by-week breakdown

Firefox Desktop/Mobile

• [Lukas] Continuing ESR
  • Finalize if ESR will be ongoing
  • Devise a plan to manage ESR releases (can this be community based?)
• [Lukas] 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
• [Sylvetre] Determine whether we can make release-drivers archive public
• [Lawrence] 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

• [all] Participate in B2G test days
• [Bhavana, Lawrence] Create B2G release model proposals and gather feedback for potential changes in 2.2 cycle.
• [Bhavana] Figure out what to do with B2G Security Releases
• [Preeti] Create plan for addressing regression backlog

Special Projects

• [Bhavana] Get l10n strings changes going-in for HIndi, take some initiative related to community events, MoZRep involvement
• [Lukas] Ascend Project
  • develop curriculum
  • select participants for first pilot
  • launch first pilot
• [Sylvestre] Code Coverage + better tests + coding style + static analyzer
• [Lawrence]
• [Preeti] Work with contributors in India to get Mozilla Location Services (MLS) data from various cities

Personal Development

• [Bhavana]
• [Lawrence] Continue French lessons with DuoLingo, achieve level 10 (currently level 8)
• [Lukas]
• [Preeti]
• [Sylvestre]
• [Benjamin]
• [Pranav]