linaro-project-management team mailing list archive

[Joey Stanford <joey.stanford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Gang,

There is a bit of uneasiness and confusion surrounding the move to
monthly releases so I thought I'd offer up some commentary.  Part of
the cause of this anxiety is due to a general desire to explore the
Agile methodology and best practices and see if what we could adopt
inside Linaro.

So that we're on the same page, here's what relatively certain today:

1) Working Groups will be making a monthly source code release.

Please socialize this within your teams and begin to think about how
you want to accomplish this.  The finer details have not yet been set
but Kiko has some ideas which will be appearing during the TL calls.
Note that this is a source code release only.

To help you frame this mentally, here is the current mock-up of the
download page that Kiko and I have been playing with:
http://www.linaro.org/remote/downloads/

Our release manager(s) will be generating the schedule for these over
the next few weeks and more work is being done behind the scenes so
stay tuned.

2) The project management team will be piloting some Agile-based ideas

 * The Landing Teams will be piloting SCRUM lead by Anmar with help from Vicky.
 * Mounir is looking at some changes for his WGs and he'll be in touch
with the affected TL's to discuss the ideas (if not already).
 * Vicky and myself, with some help from James W and the PMs, are
looking at the viability of a Kanban system integrated into
status.linaro.org
 * The PM team is reviewing other tools such as LeanKitKanban and
IceScrum among others.
 * Illias is looking at a broad range of things for OCTO and Graphics
and will be in touch (if not already) with those affected to discuss
ideas.

If you, as a Team Lead, want to move faster or do any sort of pilot on
your own, DO IT. :-)   These are pilots and not edicts.  Discuss these
items in your teams so long as they don't detract from getting your
WI's completed. As a general rule we should always be on the look out
for enhancements.


3) Monthly releases != Agile

Please don't confuse these two items.  Yes, moving to a monthly source
code release definitely lends itself to applying Agile practices, and
yes, we want to foster/encourage this.  Because we are still thinking
through the relationships and the practices I don't have any immediate
guidance for you beyond what's above.  At some point though we'll
settle on what looks like the best ideas and formalize them.  I'm
hopeful that we'll be driving these improvements via the release
process and release manager but they will take some time. We don't
want to rush into anything yet we also do not want to drag our feet
until November.   Since a mass training will likely not be done due to
cost, we have to look for easily driven, high value avenues.


Joey