Fedora Release Criteria

You can't know if you're ready to release unless you know what done means. .... When you use release criteria to know when a project is done, you have taken potentially hidden decisions and made them public and clear. Make your release criteria objective and measurable, so everyone on the project knows what they're working towards. Use the criteria as you progress through the project and up to the final release. Then you can say 'Release it!' with pride. Also, ponies. Johanna Rothman

Purpose

• To make sure our releases meet the needs of our target audience.
  • The target audience for each public release (Alpha, Beta, and Final) can be different. They might also overlap.
• To establish when a release is "done" in terms that most people can understand and in ways that help new people to understand the process and participate.
• To clearly document the criteria that must be met for each of our public releases (Alpha, Beta, Final) to ship.

Benefits

• By documenting and deciding these items in advance we seek to lessen the the last minute meetings and subjective decisions that have to be made at the last minute.
• Help as a guide to others who are not involved in the release process to understand our goals and objectives
• Reduce the need for "gut level" subjective feelings about whether we are ready to ship or not.
• Helps us to focus on the purpose of the release and what we are doing it for while focusing less time and energy on things outside of this scope.
• Provides an early warning sign if the release is not on track for shipping on time.

Release Criteria Specifics

• Release criteria for each public release also provides guidance as to whether a particular bug should block the public availability of a release.
• Release criteria increases in difficulty culminating with the Final Release (GA--General Availability)
• Unique pages for the release criteria are created for each public release
• Release criteria not only reflects acceptable defect levels, it also details acceptable levels of polish

Public Releases

• Fedora 13 Alpha Release Criteria
• Fedora 13 Beta Release Criteria
• Fedora 13 Final Release Criteria

Release Constraints

Fedora places a high priority on releasing according to schedule. While, release quality is very important, there are circumstances where the schedule takes priority.

The following priorities, in this order, will define what matters most in completing our releases:

1. Target schedule date
2. Release quality
3. New release features

Bugs can be fixed in package updates and new features can be included in the next release.

Reference Material

• http://www.universityalliance.com/info1/whitepapers/villanova/pdfs/WP_VU_ReleaseCriteriaGoodtoGo.pdf
• http://www.jrothman.com/Papers/ReleaseCriteria.pdf
• http://www.jrothman.com/Papers/releasecriteria.html
• http://www.ddj.com/architect/184415651