Managing the Release Life Cycle of an OSS Project

Speaker:Robyn Bergeron Date:2013-02-22

Features and Change

• Features (feature-based) vs. Sprints (time-based)
• Changes are features
• Features without documentation might as well not exist
• Avoid surprises for your end-users
  • Surprises turn people away
  • Surprised users may not come back

Managing Change

• Change is contentious
• Change things sanely, with ample warning
• Document everything
• You don’t know everything, and new-comers definitely do not
• Learn to live w/ Murphy’s Law
  • Document retrospectives/post-mortems
  • Opportunities to share what you learned
• Set expectations
  • Transparency is essential
  • Be forthcoming in your communication
  • Surprises: scary; Invitations: awesome