Hi, 12.3 is out! For most of the people out there this is "just another Release". For us in the openSUSE Team it has been an extraordinary one for several reasons. What we understand as Release is fact formed by two different phases: * Development phase (integration) * Release phase During 12.2, openSUSE Team at SUSE documented and executed the last few milestones of the Release process[1]. This effort allowed us, together with the work done in the Development phase done by coolo and the one done by the formed Release Team (coolo + ismail) and your continuous effort, get a Release with good acceptance. Even though 12.3 was a shorter Release, we were better prepared for assuming the responsibility. we improved and extended the documentation of the Release process[2], we reinforced the management effort, lead by Ludwig, we introduced the Hackathons in the process, we introduced the content/communication tasks earlier in the process and we added a significant amount of effort in designing and introducing QA as a relevant action of the Release process. These actions allowed us to improve the engagement with community members in several areas, increase the impact and the quality of our communication, include complex features like Secure Boot in the distribution, increase our efficiency significantly despite we have integrated new members in the team, improve several new features introduced in 12.2 (translations, social media campaign) and correct several weak points detected during the previous release. In general, from our point of view, we improved as a team and we improved the Release process. It will take time before this internal improvements have a clear impact in the quality of the distribution but those of you who are close to this effort might confirm or not this internal conclusion. Now that the Release is over, the team goes back to other tasks and the Release Team focus on factory. As you know Ismail is no longer in the team and we expect during this year many SUSE employees helping us in the openSUSE development so we are now studying new approaches to the Release Team. we expect to have a solution soon so factory goes back to a normal state. A consequence of our new approach related with QA has been the detection of several limitations in the main tool we use, openQA. Together with upstream developers, we are currently dedicating most of team resources to this tasks[3]. There are some other tasks that we are currently working on (April): * Event organization: openSUSE Board Meeting, Joint Desktop Meeting, Plasma Frameworks 5 Sprint. Now that the Release is over, we will also put energy in openSUSE Conference. * Travel Support Program Management application[4]: as you know, the involvement of SUSE in the TSP program committee is now zero, which means that is the community who now run the program. Our support is focused on the administrative, financial area. In order to increase the relevance of the Program, we have detected a need for a tool that allow the TSP, the Board and SUSE to coordinate better to become more efficient. * At SUSE, we have been preparing several proposals for the Board that we are presenting this weekend to better coordinate the following areas: ** Event/Merchandising area ** Infrastructure ** Financial * SUSE strategy and Action plan in openSUSE. we are currently discussing what are we going to do in openSUSE the following years as part of the community. In a few weeks we expect to count with a new artist for the team and, during summer, a new hacker will join the team. As you know, we are also looking for a senior KDE developer since Will Stephenson has moved to another department (thanks Will for your work in openSUSE, see you around). In order to follow our activity please check our management tool[4]. I think it kind provide a good overview of the complexity of the Release process. [1] 12.2 release process documentation published: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Public_Release_Action_Plan [2] 12.3 release process management tool: http://board.opensuse.org/projects/opensuse-12-3-release/issues/gantt [3] openQA development sprint: http://board.opensuse.org/projects/openqa-improvement/activity?set_filter=1&show_issues=1&show_changesets=1&show_news=1&show_wiki_edits=1 [4] Management tool: http://board.opensuse.org/projects Saludos -- Agustin Benito Bethencourt openSUSE Team Lead at SUSE abebe@suse.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org