focalboard-release.md

Focalboard Release Process

This document outlines the Focalboard release process for the Mattermost core team. Our release process draws from many best practice Agile, Scrum, and Software Development Lifecycle methodologies.

Release Timeline

Focalboard release schedule for July and August is outlined here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nMrpSyR8PSEkHuQl_oJ-bAz1_qpEiGhgF4HdDX1Uf4Q/edit#gid=0.

The release that will be included in the next self-managed release pre-packaged version will generally be the latest Focalboard Personal Edition release from the prior month. The deadline to get the pre-packaged version to the self-managed release is by self-managed Code Freeze day. The pre-packaged version is tested a few days prior to self-managed Code Freeze day.

Notes

• TBD: Critical bugs are flagged and fixed before releasing, with quick dot releases completed as needed.
• TBD: Incident Collaboration Playbook is used to run releases.
• Documentation on publishing a release: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11uLGhYYNnsulL1oUAlfFyNcT3wgAiDJmCSvnNkuAbpA/edit#heading=h.6kw7puo0cpnm
• Documentation on publicity process: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C1ke76Y-KV9k0buJsv57kqq5HFdR2BwnpkmVHmBCxuA/edit#
• Goal is to use feature flags for features. Focalboard itself is currently behind a feature flag and tagged as experimental in June 16th self-managed release.
• Goal is to automate as many tests as possible and to integrate with the QA dashboard.

Basic release tasks

• Track and triage bugs via GitHub; Focalboard for work items
• Add PR milestones for QA tracking
• TBD: Triage meetings and process to identify high priority bugs
• Update changelog with changes, upgrade notes, contributors, and known issues
• Update NOTICE.txt
• Update dependencies
• Translations monitoring
• List software requirements (e.g. OS, browser) and minimum server version requirements
• Testing + automated tests
• Marketing - Release announcements, tweets
  • TBD: In-product notice, Wikipedia, download page**
• Feature documentation
• Release
  • App store release
  • GitHub release
  • Check minimum required server version (if applicable)
• Contributors
  • Swag
• TBD: Release dates - Communicate in google calendar and channel header
• TBD: Retrospectives
• TBD: Metrics - Quality metrics, e.g. number of bugs fixed, number of dot releases, etc.
• TBD: Security updates communication