Maintenance policy extension readiness review - FY24 Q1
In &828 (closed) we've been working on tools and process changes to allow us to support a maintenance policy extension. This issue is a review of the updated process, the impact on the workload of affected teams, and a decision for the next steps (more work, extend, other).
Current status - 2023-04-21
Current data (shown below) shows the new patch release process is less work for release managers, but slightly more work for SETs. The data is based on six patch releases that have been performed under the new process: 15.10.2
, 15.10.3
, 15.10.4
, 15.8.6
, 15.7.9
, 15.9.5
. The last three were part of a backport request.
Our current estimates show an extended maintenance policy could be more work, especially for SETs compared with the original process.
At this time we are not confident about extending the Maintenance Policy. Neither Delivery nor Quality has the capacity to take on additional work so we will need to increase the automation of the patch release process or reduce workload in other areas before we make this change.
To increase the amount of data to help with planning the next steps we intend to continue with the internal pilot of the new patch release process.
Data to track patch release effort
Estimating the effort involved in the new patch process (currently in pilot) compared to the original patch process and the estimated effort for a full maintenance policy extension:
Team | Original patch process (Release Managers merge, tag, publish) | New patch process being piloted (Developers merge directly to stable branch. Release Managers tag, publish)) | Full Maintenance Policy extension (bug fixes patches into x3 versions) |
---|---|---|---|
Patch release effort for Release Managers | - 10 hrs per patch - 9 changes included (15.9.3) |
- 4.4 hours (based on the data from six patch releases) (details) - Average of 5 bug fixes per patch - Estimated 1 ping or manual reminders related to the new process - (Slack) |
Estimated to be 10-12 hours to prepare and publish three patch versions |
Patch release effort for SETs | Providing support for any test failures on the tagged package | - Providing support for any test failures on stable branch commits - Average of 3 requests per patch - Providing support for any test failures on the tagged package (details) |
- Providing support for any test failures on stable branch commits. Estimated to be around 10 requests per patch - Providing support for any test failures on the tagged package |