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Blueprints

Revision as of 20:24, 14 November 2013 by Russellb (talk | contribs) (Creation: Bold the step that everyone seems to forget, setting a milestone)

Launchpad blueprints are used to track the implementation of significant features in OpenStack. Keeping their status current is critical to the success of the release and the project as a whole. It avoids unnecessary reporting, pings and discussions, and keeps everyone on the same page.

Blueprints lifecycle

Blueprints offer a forum for listing and planning specifications for work to be done. Whereas one could think of these as bugs with a "Feature Request" priority, there is actually a more fundamental difference. A bug is a description of a problem, and a blueprint is a description of a solution. It would be perfectly legitimate, given the scope of a particular problem, to file a bug on a problem and then to write up a blueprint describing the approach to solving the problem. For most bugs this would be a rather large waste of time, but is merely pointed out to underscore the difference in purpose.

The Blueprint system itself is quite simple, and the only thing required to create a blueprint is a title and a description of the blueprint. It is expected that longer-form official writeups of the approach would go on a wiki page, and accordingly the blueprint has a field for specifying where the writeup can be found. The intent here is that if you write a proper description of the work in the wiki, then once you are done with it you will be left with some form of documentation describing a particular feature.

Blueprints, like bugs, can be targeted towards different milestones, so that at any point it's simple to see what the status of intended work is.

Here are the different steps in a blueprint's life:

Creation

If you intend to work on a given feature, you should create a blueprint for that. Adding a blueprint is simply a matter of going to the project's blueprints page, such as [1] and clicking on "Register a Blueprint". Describe the feature summarily in the blueprint itself, and link to another document (using the specification link) if you have more.

Note that you may optionally track the peer-review of your blueprint using the Drafter and Definition fields.

Once it is ready for PTL review, you should set:

  • Milestone: Which part of the release cycle you think your work will be proposed for merging.


Click on Under development in Releases to access the current release cycle schedule.

Inclusion in the release roadmap (PTLs)

The PTL triages the blueprint by setting a priority:

  • Priority: <blueprint priority> (see below)


They may also unset the target milestone and set the Definition to Obsolete (together with an explanation in the whiteboard) if the blueprint is a wrong idea altogether.

During development (assignee)

The "Implementation" field should reflect progress in your work:

  • Implementation: <degree of completion> (see below)


Please update the implementation status regularly to avoid being pinged about it :)

When merged (assignee)

When the work is fully merged, finalize the spec by setting:

  • Implementation: Implemented


Blueprints reference

Here are the different fields available in Launchpad blueprints, and how we use them within the OpenStack project.

Specification link

URL to an additional document, potentially describing the design and implementation details.

Priority

PTLs use priority to communicate how important a given feature is to the success of the next release.

Essential Would prefer not to release without that feature
High Important feature that we should definitely have in the release
Medium Optional feature that should still be part of the roadmap
Low Optional feature that may make it, but we should *not* follow on the release radar
Undefined Blueprint has not been triaged yet

Definition

You can optionally use this field during the planning phase. We also use it to mark a blueprint Superseded or Obsolete.

Implementation

Use this status to indicate the degree of completion of your blueprint. This is mandatory.

Unknown Implementation status was not set yet! Fix it!
Not started Implementation is 0%
Started Implementation is > 0%
Blocked Implementation is blocked, see whiteboard for details, shall be discussed at next release meeting
Slow progress Implementation is not blocked, but might miss the target milestone
Good progress Implementation is on track to be delivered at the targeted milestone
Beta available Implementation is almost complete, code is available in a branch or a draft review now
Needs code review All changes were proposed in review
Implemented All changes were merged


Extra statuses (you should probably not use them):

Informational No code changes needed. Maybe that didn't need a blueprint in the first place.
Deferred Blueprint was deferred to a future release. You should probably use the future series next milestone instead.
Needs infrastructure (not used)
Deployment (not used)

Series goal

The release series (Essex, Folsom...) for the proposed change. This should always match the target milestone. An automated script will ensure that the two fields match, it runs roughly every 2 hours.

Approver

The PTL for the project (optional).

Drafter

The person responsible for the planning phase on this blueprint (optional).

Assignee

The person responsible for implementing the blueprint. This is mandatory.

Milestone target

The milestone the blueprint should be completed by. This is mandatory.

Related branches

Not used.

Related bugs

Bugs related to this blueprint, if any.

Sprints

Not used.

Feedback requests

Not used.

Whiteboard

Free-form notes. If the blueprint implementation is blocked, this should state the reason why. Gerrit will add notes about corresponding reviews in this field.

Dependency tree

Dependencies between blueprints. If one blueprint needs to be delivered before this one, this needs to be recorded here. Note that if B depends on A being completed, the priority of A should be as high (or higher) as the priority of B.


See also