2026-03-03 Release Management & Commmunication WG meeting notes

 Date

Mar 3, 2026

 Participants

• @Autumn Faulkner @Charlotte Whitt @Jennifer Eustis @Thomas Trutt @Tod Olson

• Regrets: @Charlotte Whitt @Jeremy Huff

• Guest: @Oleksii Petrenko

Recording: https://mediaspace.msu.edu/media/RMC+meeting+recording+3+3+26/1_s8jaa4um

Agenda

• Welcome Oleksii!

  • Intro to this group and what we hope to accomplish

    • Release communication for library users (working with POs here)

    • Supporting RMS, being more plugged into release management discussions

• Questions for Oleksii

  • What is the biggest challenge you face in your role as release manager?

  • If you could set up an ideal process for FOLIO release management, what would it be?

  • Are there processes or projects you and your teams would like to do, but don’t have time for?

  • If you and your teams could stop doing something, what would it be?

  • What can the Product Council do to provide more support?

    • Administrative tasks? Communication and outreach?

  • What suggestiong can you make the release process more scalable? (IE more deveoplemt teams are onboarded)

  • Anything else you wish Product Council was more aware of or involved in?

  • Any questions for us?

  • We will also have more questions – is Slack best? Email? More meetings?

• Notes

  • Initial goal for development was to release modules only; but presently, not only modules but applications need management

  • Release manager role – primarily ensuring timeframe and requirements are set and met

  • Challenges

    • Coordinating across multiple time zones, multiple language/culture contexts

    • Quality assurance and testing – Bugfest data significantly outdated, which impacts testing

      • Hopefully, contributed dataset (Better Sample Data WG) would improve this somewhat

      • But now that FOLIO has multiple configurations (ECS vs. non-ECS, etc.), testing across all these variations can be challenging

      • All of this means testing cannot be fully automated (45% still manual)

    • Dev team staffing is constrained

  • Do more of:

    • Would like to pursue more automation of documentation and knowledge management

    • AI a possible solution here

    • Kitfox has successfully tested a chatbot to search documentation and return answers/guidance for development processes

    • Automations could also:

      • reduce bureaucracy associated with release communication and processes

      • approve modules for release

  • Would like to delegate:

    • Release digest information

      • Is this useful for people? Analytics show ~1000 views

        • Tod notes that at UChicago, one or two people review the digest and then summarize for colleagues

      • This could be turned over entirely to PC or another community management solution; there is very little capacity for this

    • Hosting providers also have their own training and communication

  • How can PC support?

    • It would be helpful for this group to gather feedback about release communications

    • What level of detail is ideal?

    • What kind of info are users looking for?

Action items