Release Management Q4 2014 Goals

<platform> denotes goals that are listed on the platform Q4 goals list

Release Management General

Release Quality - Improve automation / reduce risk of manual errors

• [MISSED] [Lukas] <stretch> Create automated release checklist (maybe based on ship-it)
• [ON TRACK] [Sylvestre] Fully automate Product-Details (bug 1040759)

• [Sylvestre] Automate manual portions of ship-it
  • [MISSED] pull in recent changesets from tbpl/treeherder (bug 1053814)
  • [MISSED] create new l10n milestone and pull in l10n changesets from dashboard (bug 1035458)
  • [DONE] auto populate partials (bug 1049689)

• [Sylvestre] Automate the publication of Firefox Android
  • [DONE] Use the Google play API to push APK automatically (bug 1045531)
  • [DONE] Use the Google play API to update the locale descriptions (bug 1091469)

Release Quality - Find issues earlier

• [MISSED] [Lukas] (this is carried forward to a more specific Q1 goal, there were technical issues with doing this that pushed it beyond the time available in Q4) Continued work on the Release Readiness Dashboard to reflect accurately the current release schemas
  • Add in ESR
  • Get Firefox Android queries/groups created
  • Include Triage queries
  • Get external data visualized on it - stability/performance metrics so that we can get this public-facing
• [MISSED] [Lawrence] Create checkIID hook to catch required UUID bumps

Communication

• [DONE] [Lawrence] <platform> 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
  • Proposal published: Release Notes 2.0 proposal
  • Had initial conversations with marketing and Firefox growth team about kicking off project in Q1
• [ON TRACK] [Lawrence] Find ways to improve org's understanding of current tracking and release schedule
  • Created merge/release calendar
  • Held session in Portland about release schedule and process
  • TODO: publish updated documentation about release schedule and process
  • TODO: publish release information on video screens in office
• [all] Continue to refine team wiki

Release Strategy

• [ON TRACK] [Lawrence] Create release strategy document summarizing plans for improvements to measurement, process, issue mitigation, turnaround time, and automation.

Expand contributor involvement

• [Lukas] <stretch> Define contributor pathways
  • Triage of Desktop, Mobile, B2G, Platform, Services (?) bugs

• [Haseeb] Attend CrashStats Meeting

Firefox Desktop/Mobile

• Manage and coordinate active Firefox and Firefox for Android releases
  • [DONE] [Lawrence] Firefox 32
  • [DONE] [Sylvestre] Firefox 33
  • [DONE] [Lawrence] Firefox 34
  • [DONE] [Lukas] Firefox 35
  • [DONE] [Sylvestre] Firefox 36
• [Lukas] [ON TRACK] <platform> Throttling improvements - finalize data gathered between FF31-33, implement updated SOP
  • Round 2 of experiments to get within the same week as release
  • This will get a faster uptake on new features in product release - great for press/marketing efforts to get more Mozillians
• [Lukas] [DONE] <platform> All-Hands potential sessions:
  • Can we get commitments to turning off any intermittent orange tests and then build back up?
  • Getting to Daily Betas - what's left?
  • L10n, the black box and what can we open up to greater understanding?
  • Learning from our mass-chemspill - Port-Mortem and actions to take forward
  • Release Notes & PR - overhaul and creating a high-signal method for generation of our release communications
  • Where are we in the release cycle and what does that mean to you? (dev/qa/pr/other?)
• [Haseeb] Shadow Benjamin on Nightly Triage

Firefox ESR

• [Benjamin] Create plan for mozilla.org changes to better expose ESR
• [Benjamin] Investigate building MSI Installers for ESR
• [Benjamin] Investigate marketing for ESR

Special Projects

• [DONE] [Lukas] Ascend Project
  • Running the program
  • Prepare metrics (visuals) to help summarize and be able to talk about how Ascend #1 went and what's next

• [Haseeb] Hillhacks
  • Successfully run the hillhacks event

• [Sylvestre] Testing
  • Get test suite to green by separating oranges and creating a strategy to determine if a reported orange failure is a real failure
  • Incorporate C++ coverage report in builds bug 890116
  • Incorporate static analyzer in builds and report on diffs
  • Better tests
  • Coding style
  • Improve documentation/usability of the various tests
  • Implement some features in treeherder (like the ETA) bug 1052397

Personal Development

• [DONE] [Lawrence] Learn about Google Analytics
  • Completed Digital Analytics Fundamentals and Google Analytics Platform Principles online courses.
  • Read A/B Testing by Dan Siroker and Pete Koomen
• [DONE] [Lukas] Back to guitar playing! Get above 80% on at least 2 songs I used to play, and get 2 new songs into the above 80% range
• [MISSED] [Sylvestre] Continue Spanish lessons
• [Benjamin] Take some Banjo classes
• [Haseeb] Focus on communications skill, start reading Agile/Release Management Book