[6] in Release_7.7_team
meeting #2
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dorothy Bowe)
Wed Feb 23 13:43:52 1994
To: release-77@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 94 13:43:16 EST
From: Dorothy Bowe <dot@MIT.EDU>
Our second meeting is scheduled for this Friday, February 25th from 1:30
to 3:30 in the large conference room, E40-382. At this meeting we will
discuss how to determine which of the proposed items should get included
in the next release.
In my humble opinion, we could make any of the proposed items happen,
provided we had enough resources, but some will take more development
effort, others more documentation and consulting effort, and others more
testing. Our task therefore, is to determine which items are more
important than others and where we should put our limited resources, as
well as to understand what needs to be done in order to make the release
as smooth and painless as possible, both for the release team and the
user community.
As a first step in putting together the release "inclusion list", I want
to come up with a list of criteria to be used to rate the importance,
impact, and effort involved in each proposed item. These criteria
should be general rather than specific and allow a range of responses as
to how each fits the criteria. Some examples might be:
Criteria Range
-------- -----
effort for development (code exists <-> long time)
user visibility (invisible <-> major change)
testable (test plan exists <-> major effort)
demonstrated need (system broken <-> none)
changes understood (documented change list <-> no clue)
etc. If you happen to get stuck in traffic or on the Red Line
somewhere, you might want to start thinking about other criteria to
include in this list; it would save time on Friday.
Since a criteria list by itself won't be terribly helpful, the next
thing to do is to list the reasons and/or facts to support rankings on
major criteria for items. For example, we could say:
Ultrix 4.2a
Demonstrated Need
- SAS 6.09 won't run without it
Effort
- Ezra says it should be 50% done, but Craig isn't sure
etc.
Once all that is done, we can start looking at how each item rates
according to the criteria.
That makes the agenda for this week's meeting:
Meeting #2 Agenda
=================
1. Open questions/issues from last meeting (?)
2. What should go into the release?
a) List criteria to use in determine importance
b) Discuss & list reasoning to use in ranking criteria
c) Rank criteria according to relative importance
d) Rate release items
./dot
-----------
Dorothy Bowe
Academic Computing Services
Faculty Liaison
email: dot@mit.edu
phone: (617)253-0170
fax: (617)258-8736
