News on upcoming Software Release process
Walker Sampson
Hi everyone,
The BitCurator Consortium Executive Committee is happy to announce a formal software release process for the BitCurator Environment. This process contains several new components for the BitCurator Consortium and the wider community.
First, the Software Development Committee will review discussions and issues raised in the public BitCurator Users Forum Google Group on a monthly basis, and Consortium members should expect issues coming to our Help Desk to also be reviewed. These reviews will inform the tickets we create for inclusion in the development roadmap. The Software Development Committee will communicate back to the forum threads so users can stay updated on progress with specific issues.
The tickets themselves (which may be issues, feature requests or known bugs) will be listed at our JIRA site starting in Spring 2018. We hope a listing of these tickets will help the community understand all the received development requests and any further comments there.
Both the Software Development Committee and the Executive Committee will discuss the prioritization of tickets, and those decisions will be reflected at the JIRA site. We are aiming for a holistic approach to this process, so prioritization will take into account existing discussions, any software dependencies, voting by BCC members, and any further inputs. Discussion and expansion on any issue is always welcome at the monthly BCC community calls as well.
A roadmap for the BitCurator Environment will also be found at our new documentation site. We are aiming for a quarterly release cycle for maintenance developments and adjustments (addressing aspects like the core Ubuntu OS and VirtualBox updates), and every 12 months will incorporate major issues and new features.
There are several goals we hope to achieve with rolling out this process.
1. Communicate to the BitCurator communities where we are in prioritizing issues and features and when we are aiming to have those aspects resolved or implemented
2. Lay groundwork for further development work by better articulating what is desired or needed by the community
3. Enhance our use of the discussions already occurring in the public forum, BCC Help Desk and other venues
As always, please send feedback in either the Google Group, monthly calls or emails to myself or Sam Meister (s...@educopia.org). We will be interested to understand how this is or is not working for the BitCurator community!
Thanks,
Walker Sampson
on behalf of the Software Development Committee