‘My time as Release Manager’

okay i'm here with martin renvoice we're going to be talking about his role uh over the past 12 months or so as release manager in the koa community uh so martin uh perhaps if you tell us all a little bit first of all about what the job of release manager involves okay um so the release manager it's the the head role of the the community you are in effect the the guide and shepherd for the um the release team so the release team is the group of people that are responsible for um making making the next set of releases for the community project so as as that gatekeeper or that that guidance shepard you're responsible for helping show the direction of where uh coach should be going you're the final gatekeeper for any code that gets pushed into the system so code goes through a sign off and a testing quality assurance process and then you're that final final set of eyes before it gets pushed into the master branch or development process and then the final piece of work for you is to actually make the release um come every six months we do a feature release okay so what what would be the main milestones of your 12 months then okay so i i spent two odd spent 12 months which is two release stints so within those stints you've got a feature release which is the the next milestone release with a set of new features in it you've also got six maintenance releases within a six month period where you're partly responsible for helping the release maintainers make sure that they get their releases that include security and bug fixes once a month um consistently okay and are the feature releases at a particular time of year yes so the release names um hint at when a release is made so for a feature release you've got the 0.6 and the point 11. so 0.6 being june and then point 11 being a november release okay okay great thank you um and during your your 12 months would you say you did anything particular or anything different that maybe made your mark on on the roll uh so i i used the opportunity to try and shake up the process a little bit um we i split the the six month period or each of the six month periods into three blocks of two months so that we had more of an experimental window in the middle to try and encourage uh and flourish new development that in the past might have got caught up in the key race process so we had a two-month window where it was we would concentrate on bug fixes and making sure that the maintenance releases were going really well and the previous feature release was nicely polished and then we'd have a two-month window with uh where i encourage the qa team and the testers and the developers to be a little bit more ambitious uh to let code through a little bit earlier than it may have been let through in previous cycles uh with the the promise and the adherence that developers would be quick acting to fix bugs that we then found during that two-month period and then we had a two-month period prior to the actual release of the the new feature set where we polished and fixed bugs and made sure that the release was as stable as we could make it okay that worked really well good and what about um any changes to processes and practices um during your time did you did you work on anything there in particular we worked quite hard to generally improve the development workflows so i worked quite closely with the quality assurance team to kind of improve their knowledge of various areas of the code base we tried to document more of the workflows there's a lot of workflows that have been happening behind the scenes but weren't well documented so when it came to passing over from one team to the next team six months later um there was a lot of knowledge either lost or hopefully the same people stuck around um so i tried to get that that documented and best practices sort of written down more and available for the next teams to look at we also had a bit of a focus on improving the coverage of our unit tests we worked quite hard with our automated testing systems to add additional um cases that weren't tested before so on a wider range of versions of mysql on a wider range of servers um which which has worked really well and is ongoing um i think those kind of process-wise those were the real improvements great i mean you're saying you're saying we obviously it is very much a team effort the whole running of the community so what's the other roles in the community just so you know we're clear on what what other jobs there are to do so the release manager is the the figurehead at the top and then directly beneath um that that figurehead you have the quality assurance team uh who's responsible for doing a final set of testing of any code that's been submitted and a review of the technicalities of how that code works they're looking for anything that's not been caught in an initial test run we've got people that can do sign off so that's everybody so you you anybody here can can help with sign off that's the first run of testing so if you've paid for an enhancement or found a bug you just take a look on bugzilla and have a test to run through the test plan so you're you're looking for does it function as expected as described are there areas where it might affect something else that the developer may not have spotted um so that's the the sign off that's the the wide group then within that we've got in parallel you've got the release maintainers so there's three release maintainers one for each of the current supported branches so we have a stable branch an old stable branch and a legacy or old old stable branch so there's a maintainer for each of those and it's their job to pick and choose bugs that are have been fixed in in the development branch and choose whether they are an enhancement or a bug fix or a security fix and then waterfall them or cascade them down into their branches and then do a release each month um and then there's a whole group of people who also help out with things like concentrating on the translation uh each month concentrating on documentation so we've got a documentation team in general and i'm right in saying that all of these roles are volunte voluntary in the community so they're all sort of roles that people can come forward and and um and sort of offer to to um to take on correct correct we will always try and encourage new new blood into into the teams um and each so to become a member of the of the team um you can submit your name forward or put your name forward um once every six months prior to a a team change we tend to try and keep the team stable for six months um so you'd have to wait for a a team change and then we have a an annual or a community meeting where you'll be voted in and kind of encouraged and helped on the for the next sort of the first month of that to help you settle in excellent so it's a welcoming team yes very honey great just coming back to you and your role um is there anything in your time that you feel you wanted to get done but didn't get done i think there's there's always targets that are um not necessarily achieved in a um in a cycle so i'd i'd really hoped to um introduce a chronological change log so uh uh we have a set of release notes each release but what we don't have is a a clear chronological so time ordered log of um features and additions over time and unfortunately that was a bridge too far um i didn't manage to to complete that although those on going to try and introduce such a thing in coming releases um i also had hoped perhaps naively that i could introduce a much clearer road map for my 12 months so a road map to say we'll aim to get feature x in and concentrate on feature x as a whole community and then feature y and in that order but i found that was very challenging to do simply because the community's so large so international with so many stakeholders pulling in different directions it was it was quite difficult to shepherd enough enough of a group to be able to put a clear roadmap on paper uh we we had focal areas when they might pop up during the release was quite challenging to to time right and i mean you did this job uh alongside your full-time job at btfs europe so um you know how do you fit it in what what's the what are the tricks about fitting in voluntary community work alongside your normal day job that's probably one of the most difficult parts of the job um so being a big international community there's people working pretty much 24 hours a day from what various different countries so my the way i tried to fit it in i worked regularly in the mornings i would do an early stint um the the com we have a 9 30 meeting as a company and i would try and get the majority of my um keeping up with coding done monday to thursday um early mornings and then i would tend to use the whole of friday i would i'd save a list of more difficult bugs that i needed to look at more difficult reviews and i found that doing that couple of hours each morning meant i could keep up with the the community role and then i'd have most of the rest of the day to continue on ptfs work uh keep up with the support tickets and keep up with our own development efforts brilliant and i mean are the benefits to pcfs europe and to our customers for for you taking on that release release manager role i think so i think it i think it really helps um show the commitment to the the community that we've got as a company it gives us a huge amount of respect from the various other groups that are involved um and it from a from a selfish perspective it really helps us move some of our own targets forward it helps um as the sort of guide and shepherd it man it helps us to be able to say let's focus on areas of code that would really help benefit some of our well but our internal targets and our customers goals in this particular set of releases we we had a real focus on the accounts code and introducing cash management um and and point of sale features which hadn't really had a focus before um so it was really nice to be able to drive some of those things forward and improve for our customer base right good and and what would you like to see for the role itself in the future is there any thing you would suggest could be improved about the role or done in the role going forward i think i'd like to see i'd like to see a lot of a lot of the improvements that i tried to put in place carried forwards um so i i'm i'm aware that this cycle uh they've they've taken on the mantle of keeping the the experimental window going which is really nice to see um i think there's a real focus on trying to automate more of the processes so that developers can can concentrate more on development than uh than continued to having to be fixing bugs and and um the kind of day-to-day admin of of the role um and i think i there's there's some improvements happening on in terms of the overall handover process so from one team to the next i want to make it lighter weight and easier for new new people to step into the uh the more ambitious or more scary roles in the team great great and what about you personally are you you you know you you're a community board you like being part of the koa community so how are you getting yourself involved now that you're no longer the release manager i i do indeed i thoroughly enjoy being part of the community and so i've got a continued role as um in the quality assurance team um and as part of that i i help shoulder the burden of a lot of the the code checks i'm also continuing to help with the the next release manager's role by giving offering advice and helping with that handover process um and generally being quite a respected member of the community now i'm a bit of a face of the community so i tend to be there when people are asking questions or need help and and i take a bit of a personal um what's the word i like to encourage encourage new developers into it that's an area i'm really focused on at the moment is trying to encourage the next generation through fantastic and given the chance would you do it again i would jump at the opportunity um i would love to love to do it again um it's nice to be back into normality a bit um at the moment but i would happily happily have another go um or happily support so the the current and the next generation through excellent well thanks martin for your time and for telling us all about this uh the time that you spent as release manager um if people wanted to find out more about the roles in the community i guess they'd head over to the koa website is that right correct so the the website's got some of the the basic details on release processes and cycles and then there's a number of articles on on the community wiki which is linked from uh from the website and that details uh each of the roles how to become involved etc great okay well thanks very much martin and i hope everyone watching this has uh has enjoyed this bit of an insight and a tour of what's involved in the release manager role thank you

Channel: PTFS Europe Limited

Views: 1,506

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Koha, PTFS Europe, Library Management System

Id: QoZ0jbeY1SU

Length: 15min 40sec (940 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 30 2020