[Board] Report from release discussion

[Lussier, Kathy]

Hi all,

I am unable to attend the Project Board meeting today, but I told the
developers during last week's release discussion that I would send a report
of the discussion to the Project Board.

The release discussion came about after a discussion at the February
development meeting about the timing of releases. I offered to facilitate
<http://list.evergreen-ils.org/pipermail/evergreen-dev/2024-February/000740.html>
a big-picture discussion on ways the community could improve releases.

As far as timing of releases, the group agreed that the community should
continue with two time-based feature releases per year. Ruth Davis also
volunteered to be the person to nudge people when a bug-fix release is due
(thanks Ruth!).

We also prioritized issues that need to be addressed during the release
process. The top priorities, with the most urgent being listed first, are:

   1. Streamline / automate the release process as much as possible.
   2. Documentation of the release process.
   3. Encourage feature merges throughout the cycle so that they don't pile
   up at release time.
   4. Communications & PR should be a dedicated release team role with a
   clear strategy and playbook.
   5. Stagnation in community growth (this one actually tied with #4.)

Although automating the process was the highest priority, the group agreed
that #2 - documentation - needs to come first. There was also broad
consensus that the current developer community cannot address these issues
on its own. What is needed is funding to pay people so that documentation
and then automation are prioritized.

Stepping outside of my facilitator role for a second, I will say that I've
heard the developer community talk about these two needs for years, and I
firmly believe that automating the process will relieve some pressure felt
by our contributors while keeping our releases on schedule.

Several Project Board members attended the session, and I'm hoping they can
share their perspectives during today's meeting.I will be sharing my notes
and the recording from the session with the developer community soon so
that we can get feedback from those who were unable to attend.

On another somewhat related topic, I will also soon be calling the final
meeting for the Membership Model Subcommittee. Apologies for the delay. May
and June were somewhat busy on my end, but I expect time to free up once
ALA is over.

Thank you!
Kathy
--
Kathy Lussier
she/her
Executive Director
NOBLE: North of Boston Library Exchange
Danvers, MA
978-777-8844 x201
www.noblenet.org
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