[Archivesspace_Users_Group] tutorial on ArchivesSpace's use of Pivotal Tracker and development roadmap?

Fri Apr 18 09:19:49 EDT 2014

Thanks so much for your response, Brad. This is really helpful and answers
many questions.

Since it sounds like most of the development going forward will be going
through the Users Advisory Council, it would be great to hear from you and
reps of that group here regularly about progress, in addition to keeping
the ASpace website and Pivotal Tracker up to date so we can check on
development progress ourselves. I know you said that group is just getting
started, but I hope keeping the overall users group informed and making
ASpace development as transparent as possible will be built into the
development processes. Especially for those of us who are looking to put
ArchivesSpace into production soon, having a strong sense of where things
are going and when ASpace is likely to reach certain milestones is
essential for our planning.

Thanks for all the work that is being put into this. Please do keep us
informed as to how we as a community can help in this big undertaking.

Best,

Christine

From: archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org
[mailto:archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org] On Behalf
Of Brad Westbrook
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2014 7:28 PM
To: Archivesspace Users Group
Subject: Re: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] tutorial on ArchivesSpace's use
of Pivotal Tracker and development roadmap?

Dear Christine, Cassie, and Audra,

Let me try to answer your very good and timely questions and comments.

To begin, we have just this month transitioned from contracted development
to community supported development.   Work done under contract development
was primarily determined by the terms of the contract, the most recent of
which is still present on the ArchivesSpace website at
http://www.archivesspace.org/developmentplan.  Community supported
development is guided by the needs of the community as registered in
feature requests and bug reports from the ArchivesSpace membership.  

In preparation for that transition, we have populated the User and
Technical Advisory councils and created subgroups within each Council that
are assigned to certain areas of responsibility or work areas.  In the
Technical Advisory Council, the work areas are Architecture, Committer
Oversight, Migration, and Technical Documentation.  In the User Advisory
Council, the work areas are feature prioritization/testing, user
documentation, reporting, and gap analysis between AT/Archon and
ArchivesSpace.  Many of these groups have just been formed and are still
in the early days of defining their work scope and processes.  

Nevertheless, we have started to implement and test a development
workflow, the key steps of which are:

1)      A development cycle will be a month long instead of the two week
long cycle used with the contractor.

2)      At the beginning of each month, the features prioritization
subgroup of UAC will 

a.       Test and accept user stories done during the previous cycle

b.      Prioritize work to be done during the current cycle by the
ArchivesSpace Developer and others.

3)      The ArchivesSpace developer Chris Fitzpatrick and others will
address the prioritized work, notifying the features prioritization near
the end of the cycle when work is ready for testing

4)      The features prioritization subgroup will then test work, either
accepting it for release or sending it back for additional work.

5)      Releases will be made periodically, but we are not sure yet if
that means every month, every quarter, or some other interval.  

Because development resources are very limited right now, one developer
who also has a certain amount of management responsibilities, the features
prioritization subgroup is focusing on "families" of user stories for the
short-term, that is, user stories clustered around a certain functional
area such as agents/names, which, in fact, is the focus of this "first"
cycle of development.  We agreed, in discussion with Chris F. that this
approach would more likely expedite development at this point in time than
would prioritizing un-related stories.  

The ArchivesSpace Pivotal Tracker
(https://www.pivotaltracker.com/s/projects/386247) reflects all of the
development work identified so far.  Items in the "Icebox" are waiting
prioritization by the features prioritization subgroup.  Items in the
"Backlog" are pending assignment and scoring by the developers.  Items in
"Current" are being worked on (although currently there are a number of
items in "Current" that still need to be scored).  And, of course, items
in "Done" are all the stories that have been completed, accepted, and
released.  Several internal releases may be issued before a public release
is distributed.  The internal releases are for facilitating testing of the
stories to be included in a public release.  Internal releases iterate due
to stories being sent back for additional work or due to new bugs
surfacing during the release process.

I, too, think it would be great to have a development schedule and to be
able to say that by the end of June all import / export needs will be
addressed or that by end of the summer all public UI issues will  be
addressed.  But I don't think we know enough about our capacities yet to
do that.

I think that is a snapshot of where the ArchivesSpace development process
is right now in this transitional period.  We expect to clarify and better
document the process as it takes form over the next several months.  

All best,

Brad W. 

Bradley D. Westbrook

Program Manager

 <mailto:brad at archivesspace.org> brad.westbrook at lyrasis.org

800.999.8558 x2910

678.235.2910

bradley_d_westbrook (Skype) 

cid:image003.png at 01CE734E.FD759D30

From: archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org
[mailto:archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org] On Behalf
Of Christine Di Bella
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2014 12:25 PM
To: 'Archivesspace Users Group'
Subject: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] tutorial on ArchivesSpace's use of
Pivotal Tracker and development roadmap?

Given that many issues we users note here have been noted previously by
project team members, it would be really helpful to hear from Brad and
others on the ArchivesSpace team about how members and other ArchivesSpace
users can look up and "read" stories in Pivotal Tracker and determine
whether an issue is being actively addressed. For example, it looks like
the stories on search that Chris Prom submitted are all in the "Icebox"
and presumably not being actively worked on. What goes into determining
priorities and how are the different categories being used by the
ArchivesSpace team?

It would also be great to be able to understand what's intended for
near-term and longer term releases. I'm admittedly confused by all the
different release candidates listed in Pivotal Tracker for 1.0.9 and could
use a primer on that, but I'm also very interested in knowing what's
prioritized for the future and how that has been determined.

I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that I really want ArchivesSpace to
succeed and I fully recognize that it's only a small team for whom this is
a full-time job. The more you can help us to navigate the information
available - and to do our part to make sure it's recorded when something
is really important to us - the more we can hopefully help that happen.
Thanks in advance!

Best,

Christine

Christine Di Bella
Archivist
Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center
Institute for Advanced Study
Einstein Drive 
Princeton, NJ  08540 
Email :  <mailto:cdibella at ias.edu> cdibella at ias.edu
Phone: 609-734-8368
Website : http://library.ias.edu/archives

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