[sugar] 0.84/9.1 planning.

[C. Scott Ananian]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 2:46 PM, Ed McNierney <ed at laptop.org> wrote:
> I would also like to stop calling this "9.1" planning.  We need to plan the
> development work we need to get done, regardless of whether that work will
> be able to ship next March.  At a certain point we will have some of this
> work complete and available for qualification in a March delivery, and we'll
> ship that as 9.1.  And we'll keep going to qualify and ship more of it in
> 9.2, and more in 10.1 (or is that 0.1??), etc.

I disagree.  Part of the focus of the meeting is to present all the
ideas for future development, and then drive stakes in the ground for
what's going to be in 9.1.

We need to know where we are going, but we don't need to have decided
schedules when we give the talk.  We might decide that (say) feature
Foo Bar is really nice, but we can't possibly have it in place for
March, but that we *should* certainly implement *one small piece* of
it by then.

In the past we have divided tasks into "next release" and "future
release" where the "future" really means "never" because we don't do
*any* of the work in the "next release" timeframe.  That needs to
stop.  *Everything* we want in a "future release" must have *some*
piece we can do now, so that we continue to make progress on our
long-term goals.

So, when I called it a *9.1* meeting, I meant it: we've got lots of
crazy and not-so-crazy ideas.  *What part of them are we going to put
in 9.1*, because if we're not going to do at least a little of the
work by 9.1, it will always be future and never make it to ship.

After 9.1, we'll have a 9.2 planning meeting.  This seems a totally
sane way to schedule and name these meetings.  We can have other
"miniconferences" or "summits" or whatever, but just after each
release we have an urgent need to gather whatever we need to plan the
next one.  Let's call this one the "9.1 planning meeting".  Let's call
the next the "9.2 planning meeting".
 --scott

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