How Janeway development works #12
Description
Janeway is developed by the engineering team at the Open Library of Humanities (OLH). OLH and its staff are based at Birkbeck, University of London.
The Development Team
- Andy Byers, Director of Publishing Technology
- Mauro Sanchez, Senior Publishing Technologies Developer
- Joseph Muller, Senior Publishing Technologies Developer
- Steph Driver, Publishing Technologies Developer
The Development Cycle
Development of Janeway occurs over an 8-week scrum-agile-like software lifecycle. Each cycle is comprised of 5 weeks of development work and 2 weeks of release packaging. An additional week is available for overruns, additional bugfixes, business-as-usual tasks, personal development and research projects.
Sprints are planned based on the overall roadmap (Janeway Development Roadmap).
Sprint Planning
A sprint planning session for the next cycle will take place in the current cycle, usually two weeks before the next sprint is due to begin.
- Each issue that is flagged as a "New Feature" should have a user story attached to it
- All issues must have a shirt size assigned (this is done during backlog grooming)
- Currently the list of issues assigned to a sprint will be decided by the development team in consultation with development and commercial partners. In the future we hope to put a series of issues to the Janeway council for them to help us decide what areas we should be focusing on
Backlog Refinement
Regular sessions will be planned for the development team to triage incoming GitHub issues. This process will include:
- A decision on whether the issue is a New Feature, Enhancement, Bug or other category
- If the issue is a New Feature or Enhancement the team will discuss whether its something that should be added to Janeway
- Where an internal decision is not unanimous the team will put this to the community to decide either publicly through GitHub or via the Janeway Council (coming soon)
- Assignment of a t-shirt size
T-shirt Sizes
T-shirt sizes are a rough estimate of the amount of time a feature or bug will take the team to complete.
| Code | Length of Time |
|---|---|
| xs | < 1/2 day |
| s | 1/2 day |
| m | 1 day |
| l | 2-3 days |
| xl | 4-5 days |
| epic | break down into smaller issues |
Each issue will have a t-shirt size applied to it before it moves forward into a sprint.
Getting Help
All users of Janeway are welcome to join our Discord channel. Email a.byers@bbk.ac.uk for an invitation.
Commercial partners can also use the Janeway helpdesk to get support from a staff member: https://janeway.freshdesk.com/