Proposal: New refined release cycle [WAS: Re: release plan for 2.2.2]

[Mark Kretschmann]

On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 10:50 PM, Lydia Pintscher <lydia at kde.org> wrote:
> Heya :)
>
> I sat down to make the release plan proposal for 2.2.2. It hasn't been
> easy since there is Christmas and Co and New Years involved this time.
> I tried my best...

Thanks. What I'd like to propose is a refined cycle for our upcoming
releases. A cycle that takes our experiences (some good, some bad)
from the 2.2.1 release into account. The scheme is simple, but I am
optimistic that it could improve things a bit. Here goes:


"The 5 + 3 Release Cycle"

In effect it's similar to the current 6 weeks cycle. The difference:
After 5 weeks, we make a limited "preview" release. You could call it
a beta, or tech preview, or something similar. This release only needs
to be announced on our mailing lists, without the usual big promotion
push.

Then, after this beta, we spend another 3 weeks on processing the user
feedback and refining our product according to the feedback. Which
mostly means one thing: Fixing bugs.

Ultimately, this scheme prolongs our current cycle (6 weeks) by two
weeks, making it a 2-months cycle. My impression is that this could
work out quite well. After trying this refined cycle, we could again
evaluate it, and then see if we must refine it further. Sounds good?

-- 
Mark Kretschmann
Amarok Developer
www.kde.org - amarok.kde.org