The slip down memory lane

[Peter Jones]

On 08/16/2010 02:06 PM, Mike McGrath wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Aug 2010, Peter Jones wrote:
> 
>> On 08/12/2010 02:39 PM, Mike McGrath wrote:
>>> On Thu, 12 Aug 2010, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
>>>
>>>>>>>>> "BN" == Bill Nottingham <notting at redhat.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>> BN> I can't help but note that the slips have become more frequent as we
>>>> BN> started to actually *have* release criteria to test against. We
>>>> BN> didn't slip nearly as much when we weren't testing it.
>>>>
>>>> To me this implies that we should begin testing earlier (or, perhaps,
>>>> never stop testing) and treat any new failure as an event of
>>>> significance.  It's tough to meet a six month cycle if we spend half of
>>>> it telling people to expect everything to be broken.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Possibly also stop changing earlier?
>>
>> The window for changes is already far too short.
>>
> 
> How long is that window anyway?

Depends on how you count.  If we count development start to feature freeze:

F12: 48 days (including july 4th)
F13: 53 days (including christmas and the US thanksgiving holiday)
F14: 63 days (including july 4th)

Or maybe development start to alpha freeze:

F12: 76 days (including july 4th)
F13: 84 days (including christmas and the US thanksgiving holiday)
F14: 70 days (including july 4th)

Of course, some people would like to count from the previous "Final Development
Freeze" (or even earlier) to, say, feature freeze, even though this is wildly
unrealistic for many of us:

F12: 105 days (including july 4th)
F13: 133 days (including christmas and the US thanksgiving holiday)
F14: 115 days (including july 4th)

this basically assumes nobody has to do any work on the previous release after
the final development freeze, which isn't really true.

(I realize there are other important holidays in other countries, but I figure
this is a reasonable enough sample for exemplary purposes)

Actually, from computing these numbers I think the best lesson is that our
schedules have been so completely volatile that it's very difficult to claim
they support any reasonable conclusions.

-- 
        Peter

Space, is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely
mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the
road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.
		-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

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