We cut a release every 6 weeks, according to schedule, making it easy
to plan for, and the release manager typically sends out a warning
email to remind everyone. I don't think it makes sense to do that for
every ticket. Blockers should be reserved for things we really
shouldn't release without.

On Fri, Oct 25, 2019 at 11:33 AM Pablo Estrada <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I mentioned on the PR that I had been using the 'blocker' priority along with 
> the 'fix version' field to mark issues that I want to get in the release.
> Of course, this little practice of mine only matters much around release 
> branch cutting time - and has been useful for me to track which things I want 
> to ensure getting into the release / bump to the next /etc.
> I've also found it to be useful as a way to communicate with the release 
> manager without having to sync directly.
>
> What would be a reasonable way to tell the release manager "I'd like to get 
> this feature in. please talk to me if you're about to cut the branch" - that 
> also uses the priorities appropriately? - and that allows the release manager 
> to know when a fix version is "more optional" / "less optional"?
>
> On Wed, Oct 23, 2019 at 12:20 PM Kenneth Knowles <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> I finally got around to writing some of this up. It is minimal. Feedback is 
>> welcome, especially if what I have written does not accurately represent the 
>> community's approach.
>>
>> https://github.com/apache/beam/pull/9862
>>
>> Kenn
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 3:21 PM Daniel Oliveira <[email protected]> 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Ah, sorry, I missed that Alex was just quoting from our Jira installation 
>>> (didn't read his email closely enough). Also I wasn't aware about those 
>>> pages on our website.
>>>
>>> Seeing as we do have definitions for our priorities, I guess my main 
>>> request would be that they be made more discoverable somehow. I don't think 
>>> the tooltips are reliable, and the pages on the website are informative, 
>>> but hard to find. Since it feels a bit lazy to say "this isn't discoverable 
>>> enough" without suggesting any improvements, I'd like to propose these two 
>>> changes:
>>>
>>> 1. We should write a Beam Jira Guide with basic information about our Jira. 
>>> I think the bug priorities should go in here, but also anything else we 
>>> would want someone to know before filing any Jira issues, like how our 
>>> components are organized or what the different issue types mean. This guide 
>>> could either be written in the website or the wiki, but I think it should 
>>> definitely be linked in https://beam.apache.org/contribute/ so that 
>>> newcomers read it before getting their Jira account approved. The goal here 
>>> being to have a reference for the basics of our Jira since at the moment it 
>>> doesn't seem like we have anything for this.
>>>
>>> 2. The existing info on Post-commit and pre-commit policies doesn't seem 
>>> very discoverable to someone monitoring the Pre/Post-commits. I've reported 
>>> a handful of test-failures already and haven't seen this link mentioned 
>>> much. We should try to find a way to funnel people towards this link when 
>>> there's an issue, the same way we try to funnel people towards the 
>>> contribution guide when they write a PR. As a note, while writing this 
>>> email I remembered this link that someone gave me before 
>>> (https://s.apache.org/beam-test-failure). That mentions the Post-commit 
>>> policies page, so maybe it's just a matter of pasting that all over our 
>>> Jenkins builds whenever we have a failing test?
>>>
>>> PS: I'm also definitely for SLOs, but I figure it's probably better 
>>> discussed in a separate thread so I'm trying to stick to the subject of 
>>> priority definitions.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 9:17 AM Scott Wegner <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for driving this discussion. I also was not aware of these existing 
>>>> definitions. Once we agree on the terms, let's add them to our Contributor 
>>>> Guide and start using them.
>>>>
>>>> +1 in general; I like both Alex and Kenn's definitions; Additional 
>>>> wordsmithing could be moved to a Pull Request. Can we make the definitions 
>>>> useful for both the person filing a bug, and the assignee, i.e.
>>>>
>>>> <Priority Level>: <Criteria for what types of issues should be assigned>. 
>>>> <Expectations for responding to a Priority Level issue>
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Feb 10, 2019 at 7:49 PM Kenneth Knowles <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> The content that Alex posted* is the definition from our Jira 
>>>>> installation anyhow.
>>>>>
>>>>> I just searched around, and there's 
>>>>> https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/According-to-Jira-What-is-Blocker-Critical-Major-Minor-and/qaq-p/668774
>>>>>  which makes clear that this is really user-defined, since Jira has many 
>>>>> deployments with their own configs.
>>>>>
>>>>> I guess what I want to know about this thread is what action is being 
>>>>> proposed?
>>>>>
>>>>> Previously, there was a thread that resulted in 
>>>>> https://beam.apache.org/contribute/precommit-policies/ and 
>>>>> https://beam.apache.org/contribute/postcommits-policies/. These have test 
>>>>> failures and flakes as Critical. I agree with Alex that these should be 
>>>>> Blocker. They disrupt the work of the entire community, so we need to 
>>>>> drop everything and get green again.
>>>>>
>>>>> Other than that, I think what you - Daniel - are suggesting is that the 
>>>>> definition might be best expressed as SLOs. I asked on 
>>>>> [email protected] about how we could have those and the answer is the 
>>>>> homebrew 
>>>>> https://svn.apache.org/repos/infra/infrastructure/trunk/projects/status/sla/jira/.
>>>>>  If anyone has time to dig into that and see if it can work for us, that 
>>>>> would be cool.
>>>>>
>>>>> Kenn
>>>>>
>>>>> *Blocker: Blocks development and/or testing work, production could not run
>>>>> Critical: Crashes, loss of data, severe memory leak.
>>>>> Major (Default): Major loss of function.
>>>>> Minor: Minor loss of function, or other problem where easy workaround is 
>>>>> present.
>>>>> Trivial: Trivial Cosmetic problem like misspelt words or misaligned text.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Feb 10, 2019 at 7:20 PM Daniel Oliveira <[email protected]> 
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Are there existing meanings for the priorities in Jira already? I wasn't 
>>>>>> able to find any info on either the Beam website or wiki about it, so 
>>>>>> I've just been prioritizing issues based on gut feeling. If not, I think 
>>>>>> having some well-defined priorities would be nice, at least for our 
>>>>>> test-failures, and especially if we wanna have some SLOs like I've seen 
>>>>>> being thrown about.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 3:06 PM Kenneth Knowles <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I've been thinking about this since working on the release. If I ignore 
>>>>>>> the names I think:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> P0: get paged, stop whatever you planned on doing, work late to fix
>>>>>>> P1: continually update everyone on status and shouldn't sit around 
>>>>>>> unassigned
>>>>>>> P2: most things here; they can be planned or picked up by whomever
>>>>>>> P3: nice-to-have things, maybe starter tasks or lesser cleanup, but no 
>>>>>>> driving need
>>>>>>> Sometimes there's P4 but I don't value it. Often P3 is a deprioritized 
>>>>>>> thing from P2, so more involved and complex, while P4 is something easy 
>>>>>>> and not important filed just as a reminder. Either way, they are both 
>>>>>>> not on the main path of work.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I looked into it and the Jira priority scheme determines the set of 
>>>>>>> priorities as well as the default. Ours is shared by 635 projects. 
>>>>>>> Probably worth keeping. The default priority is Major which would 
>>>>>>> correspond with P2. We can expect the default to be where most issues 
>>>>>>> end up.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> P0 == Blocker: get paged, stop whatever you planned on doing, work late 
>>>>>>> to fix
>>>>>>> P1 == Critical: continually update everyone on status and shouldn't sit 
>>>>>>> around unassigned
>>>>>>> P0 == Major (default): most things here; they can be planned or picked 
>>>>>>> up by whomever
>>>>>>> P3 == Minor: nice-to-have things, maybe starter tasks or lesser 
>>>>>>> cleanup, but no driving need
>>>>>>> Trivial: Maybe this is attractive to newcomers as it makes it sound 
>>>>>>> easy.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Kenn
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Thu, Feb 7, 2019 at 4:08 PM Alex Amato <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hello Beam community, I was thinking about this and found some 
>>>>>>>> information to share/discuss. Would it be possible to confirm my 
>>>>>>>> thinking on this:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> There are 5 priorities in the JIRA system today (tooltip link):
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Blocker Blocks development and/or testing work, production could not 
>>>>>>>> run
>>>>>>>> Critical Crashes, loss of data, severe memory leak.
>>>>>>>> Major Major loss of function.
>>>>>>>> Minor Minor loss of function, or other problem where easy workaround 
>>>>>>>> is present.
>>>>>>>> Trivial Cosmetic problem like misspelt words or misaligned text.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> How should JIRA issues be prioritized for pre/post commit test 
>>>>>>>> failures?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I think Blocker
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> What about the flakey failures?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Blocker as well?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> How should non test issues be prioritized? (E.g. feature to implement 
>>>>>>>> or bugs not regularly breaking tests).
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I suggest Minor, but its not clear how to distinguish between these.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Below is my thinking: But I wanted to know what the Apache/Beam 
>>>>>>>> community generally thinks about these priorities.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Blocker: Expect to be paged. Production systems are down.
>>>>>>>> Critical: Expect to be contacted by email or a bot to fix this.
>>>>>>>> Major: Some loss of function in the repository, can issues that need 
>>>>>>>> to be addressed soon are here.
>>>>>>>> Minor: Most issues will be here, important issues within this will get 
>>>>>>>> picked up and completed. FRs, bugs.
>>>>>>>> Trivial: Unlikely to be implemented, far too many issues in this 
>>>>>>>> category. FRs, bugs.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Thanks for helping to clear this up
>>>>>>>> Alex
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Got feedback? tinyurl.com/swegner-feedback

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