StAC 081028 Minutes

Attendees

• Oliver Cole, OC Systems
• Rich Gronback, Borland
• Neil Hauge, Oracle
• Anthony Hunter, IBM
• Pat Huff, IBM
• Markus Knauer, Innoopract
• Donald Smith, The Eclipse Foundation
  • Took minutes -- please blame errors/corrections/misunderstandings therein.
• David Williams, IBM

Topic

What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the annual release train?

Strengths

• Allows focus and prioritization of IP Processes
• Improved cross project consumption
• Growing brand awareness
• Schedule alignment
• Unifying force in the Ecosystem
• Predictable Success (3 for 3 record)
• Taught us celestial geography
• Easier community installation and adoption
• Improved quality versus stand alone releases
• Ability to adopt early in development cycle
• Increased Promotion of individual projects that are part of the train
• Standards improving each year – demonstrable improvements YoY

Weaknesses

• Perception that it’s an integrated community product – leads to disappointment from end users
• Common schedule not perfect for everyone “M5 Syndrome”
• In some cases a short lag between projects may be more optimal (WTP consuming Platform 3.x.1 versus 3.x.0)
• Quality issues in one project impacts reputation of many
• Little ongoing enforcement of quality
• Creates spike in resource requirements (i.e., foundation bandwidth, IP analysis, etc)

Opportunities

• Improved Integration Testing
• Potential sweet spot for member recruitment campaigns after release train July/August
• “Working Group” or “Vertical” Release trains
  • I.e. “Mobile Working Group Release Train”
• Revenue generation opportunities during heavy traffic spike (a-la friends)

Threats

• Growing too large to manage
• External schedule dependencies
• Innovation stifle to meet hard deadlines
• Lack of immediate localization
• Waterfall of dependencies means if one project withdraws, many are affected