Carol Sterenberg, Chuck Koontz, darsi rueda, Julie Bickle, Tara Barnett, Thomas Trutt
Recommended Resources and Pre-Reads
None!
Agenda
Housekeeping
Future Sessions
Library of Congress: June 27th
TOPICS
What's the deal with the Poppy release?
Updating Implementation Details and creating a usable table
Closing
Any actions or follow through?
Notes
Time
Topic
Notes
01:35
EBSCO User Group
We talk about the EBSCO user group. There was great energy, great networking. Tara notes that WOLFcon is also great for networking and everyone should go. At some point this summer, Tara would like to talk about the purpose of this group and our mission/purpose/charge. A large part of it appears to be making connections and networking.
04:10
Housekeeping
Housekeeping--our session with the Library of Congress is now June 27th.
This started with a question from Jason Price from SCELC, who is investigating solutions for consortia. (It was brought up on Slack as well.)
We talk about various things we'd like to see in this directory--integrations, who is using what discovery layers (EDS, VuFind, Blacklight), which system they came from, etc.
This project would be useful both for current FOLIO libraries trying to find others who have similar process, and for libraries looking to move to FOLIO seeking information. (05:40)
Tara asks if this is a project we'd like to take on, knowing that it will require some consistent collaboration and volunteers. (07:30) We agree to discuss this next week, and Darsi volunteers to help. (08:30)
08:40
Upcoming JIRA session
Julie volunteers to lead our JIRA session--BIG YES to this one. It's tentatively on the schedule for July 11th.
09:40
Poppy Release
What's the deal with the Poppy release? It has been postponed until November. A number of dev teams teams weren't ready to release on time. Instead of skipping the Poppy release, we will in fact be postponing the release. The next release will be called Poppy, but it will be in November rather than August.
As has been discussed elsewhere, a significant factor in this decision was the need to work on Data Import, but there were other factors as well.
Another of the factors was the amount of time that it actually takes to do a release. Releases consume significant resources (in terms of time spent by developers, time spent testing, etc) and skipping a release puts resources back towards new development. Julie notes that this may make the next bugfest challenging.
The third aspect was that most libraries cannot upgrade as quickly as our 3-times-per-year release schedule demands, and there were not many crucial features in Poppy that libraries could not wait for.
13:03
The Release Schedule
Tom asks if there are serious conversations about slowing down the release schedule. FOLIO once released 4 times per year, now we release 3 times per year. Is there talk of moving that down to 2 per year?
Julie says that the PO group discussed this recently, and she has put in a WOLFcon session proposal to discuss how the release cycle works. Julie mentions that this has been discussed over the years--is this sustainable, what do the releases contain, how often should they be--and we're hoping to have a discussion about this at WOLFcon. This discussion is likely taking place in many groups. (14:20)
(14:50) Upgrading is a significant amount of work for upgrading libraries, which is why libraries sometimes put this off. (15:15) Tara asks if developers like having something a more flowing release cycle because it's more agile, and if that creates tension. (15:30) Tom notes that it is more agile, but it's not just testing--there's also bugfest fatigue and the resources that consumes. (16:30) Julie notes that what makes a process agile is that the sooner a feature is out in the world, the sooner you get feedback of how it can be improved. Releasing is the best way to get the customer feedback you need to improve your product. (16:50) As a PO, if we don't release as often, how is it possible to continue getting customer feedback? Many problems do not surface during bugfest, as they are only revealed by doing a full workflow in a live environment. How can users test their workflows with real data?
(18:38) Tom talks about the Critical Service Patch process and how important that would be if we moved to a 2 release schedule. (19:07) Tara notes that there's already been discussion on how to define "critical" in this context. But, as that process is brand new, it's too soon to judge if it is successful.
19:30
Hotfixes vs Critical Service Patches
Chuck asks about how many hotfixes there are between releases. Going forward, there will be 0 hotfixes and an indeterminate number of Critical Service Patches.
(20:30) Julie explains hotfixes vs CSPs: an overview of the history of hotfixes in FOLIO, and the new process with CSPs (See Critical Service Patch Process).