I have been asked by a number of people to kick off a retrospective for
in the Xen 4.6 release cycle.
As most of the stress of the last few weeks is now out of the way, I
thought it would be appropriate to start this process now, and let it run
for a few weeks. We have not done this type of retrospective over e-mail
before (we have done so at developer meetings as well as Hackathons).
As we have a global and distributed community, I think it is worthwhile
trying this by email. To make this work, you need to follow a few ground
Please provide feedback before August 28th.
== What to discuss / what not to discuss ==
* Do NOT send issues which are personal to the mailing list. This means,
do NOT send anything related to individuals or companies that may have
occurred in this release cycle. We do not want to have divisive flame
wars in our community: this does not fit our values and will help
no-one. If you believe that we do have an issue, that requires referring
to individuals/companies, please send me a private email following the
same formatting conventions as outlined below. I can then work with you
to figure out how to best approach this issue or piece of feedback.
* If you are not sure, contact me beforehand and we can discuss the best
* It is entirely acceptable to discuss process issues in public. Examples
of topics that are suitable are: "the hard freeze did not work", "the hard
freeze did work well", "we should have longer freeze exception windows",
"we should have no freeze exceptions at all", "we should open master to
contributions after RC2", "we should rename freeze to something else as
it encourages misunderstandings", "we should have a shorter release cycle",
etc. - these are just examples.
* If you agree with an issue/solution you can reply to it with a comment
or a "+1" in the normal way
* If you disagree or have some concerns about what has been proposed,
feel free to reply. You can use the "-1 comment" format.
Please be MINDFUL when you reply to one of the ideas and suggestions that
were raised. The ground rule about NOT becoming personal also applies to
== Formatting of Mails ==
* Please only cover only *one* topic per feedback e-mail. In other
words please do not mix topics. This makes it easier to collate feedback
and for everyone to follow the threads.
* Use the [xen 4.6 retrospective] tag in the subject line to xen-devel@
* You can use the [good] or [bad] tag in the subject line to xen-devel@
* Use [private] and the tags above, and do NOT send the mail to xen-devel@
if this is a question/issue ONLY directed at me. This will help me manage
* Use [urgent], if your issue should be discussed at the upcoming
Developer Summit Aug 18-19, OR if it is something which affects the current
release cycle (e.g. "we should open master to contributions after RC2")
* Use a descriptive subject line describing the issue/feedback, e.g.
"release cadence was too long", ...
* If you can, reply to this e-mail thread and change the title as
described above. That way, most of the feedback will be nicely threaded
Ideally, you would follow the following template
Subject: [xen 4.6 retrospective] ...
Describe what you have noticed
Described whether this was positive or negative and how
= Possible Solution / Improvement =
Describe how you think we could improve the situation
Explain why your proposal would make a positive impact
== Closing the Discussion ==
I will monitor the post-mortem and I will act as facilitator: for example
I may call out improper behaviour in public or private to keep the
At some point after August 28th, we will look at the issues and
suggestions raised and see which ones we can address and how. For the
ones we can address, we will condense feedback into concrete proposals
which we may put forward for voting (unless everyone agrees that something
is a great idea, or strictly speaking no vote is necessary).
