How *could* we make it more easy to deliver late-breaking deliverables?

[Matthew Miller]

>From today's FESCo meeting, on the topic of adding a non-blocking
Vagrant image that got missed for Alpha and Beta, Dennis noted 

 "It sets a bad precident if we let it in. People will push the limits
  further than they already do." and

 "We can physically do it. But we really should not
  add new deliverables just for final."

This particular change was, as Kevin said in the meeting, a trainwreck
of bad communication, and we've got a number of corrections in the
works to fix that --

 * an official list of deliverables for each release
 * change process amended to note need for releng communication

And I've heard a few other good ideas, including FESCo liasons for
Cloud/Server/Workstation working groups helping to track individual
changes more closely throughout the process.

But, in general, I feel sad about the outcome here. This would have
been very useful to Fedora users, and help us in a particular target
area in which we need to grow. Rather than focusing on this particular
thing, though, I want to go with the assumption that in the future, we
_will_ have more new and changing deliverables.

I see where Dennis is coming from in frustration with people not
following process. That can causes a lot of extra work for _other_
people, and can result in lower-quality results which we might not be
proud of as a project, and which can erode trust in Fedora overall.

However, there's another side too. Docker was the last big thing, but
who knows what the next one will be? Increasing communication and
long-term planning is one thing, but often with these emerging
technologies we're _really_ making it up as we go along. When these
things have little negative impact outside of their own space (they are
effectively self-contained changes _except_ for releng needs), and have
significant benefits for the user community and for Fedora's adoption
and growth, I *want* the limits pushed further than they currently can
be.

What would we need in order to have release engineering which can
provide a space for that? And let me be clear — that includes not
making work or life overwhelming with all the work you all already do.
I'm not taking the heroic existing tasks for granted, I'm asking what
_else_ would be needed to make this possible.

-- 
Matthew Miller
<mattdm at fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader