Project Graduation Checklist

The official copy of this document lives at http://www.osgeo.org/incubator/process/project_graduation_checklist.html

Wiki version 50824 of this document was discussed at Incubation Meeting 14, and a number of suggested changes were made. Logs here: http://irclogs.geoapt.com/osgeo/%23osgeo.2010-03-03.log

= Document Status =

IncCom Document Number: X

Version: 2.0. Updates since 1.0 are in red.

Last Updated: February 2010.

Status: draft

= Purpose =

The purpose of this checklist is to determine whether an Incubator Project produces quality products, remains true to its stated licence and is sustainable. Satisfying this checklist is a pre-requisite for graduation.

A project should have institutionalized the processes in this list or provide justification why the process is not used.

= Terms and Definitions =


 * Mentor : A member of the Incubation Committee chosen to assist a Project through the Incubation Process.
 * Institutionalized Process : A documented process which which addresses a need and is actively in use. It typically takes months before a process becomes institutionalized. A more detailed definition of institutionalization is found in the Capability Maturity Model (CMMI) - "Generic Goal 2: Institutionalize a Managed Process" 

= Checklist =

License

 * 1) The code has been adequately vetted to assure it is all properly licensed (a.k.a  as per a provenance review ).
 * 2) All code contributors have agreed to abide by the project's license policy, and this agreement has been documented and archived.

Processes

 * 1) The project has a suitable governance policy and project management committee established that ensures decisions are made, documented and adhered to?
 * 2) The developer community works in a healthy way, open to input, new members and reaching consensus on decisions. Ideally, the developers come from a diversity of backgrounds as there will be a greater variety of technical visions and the project is more resilient to a sponsor leaving.
 * 3) The project has documented its management processes. This is typically done within a Developers Guide or Project Management Plan.
 * 4) The project has code under configuration management  control . Eg, subversion.
 * 5) The project uses an issue tracker and keeps the status of the issue tracker up to date.
 * 6) The project maintains transparency by using  uses public communication channels. Eg archived email lists.

Quality Control
Cameron Shorter comment: Quality requirements have been moved into this section. Cameron Shorter comment: At a later stage, it would be good to expect OSGeo projects to maintain a periodic stable release schedule, ideally linked in with distribution release cycles. However, I don't think we have reached that level of maturity across our projects yet.
 * 1) The project has user documentation, which includes sufficient detail to guide a new user through performing the core functionality provided by the application.
 * 2) The project has developer documentation, which includes commented code, and sufficient detail for an experience programmer to contribute patches or a new module in accordance with the project's programming conventions.
 * 3) The project has an automated build process. Cameron Shorter comment: Covered by following line.
 * 4) The project follows a documented  manages quality process . Ideally, this includes both automated and manual testing.  an automated test system.
 * 5) The project follows  has a defined release process which includes executing the testing process before releasing a stable release.

Marketing

 * 1) Marketing material artefacts have been created about the project for  in line with the incubation criteria listed in the OSGeo Marketing Committee 's Marketing Artefacts. This lists the documentation requirements for OSGeo-Live.  (can we assume pdf handout, presentation slides and a feature matrix?)
 * 2) Stable version(s) of executable applications are bundled with appropriate distributions, (In most cases, this will at least include OSGeo-Live, but may also include DebianGIS, UbuntuGIS, and/or osgeo4w, etc.)