Project Graduation Checklist

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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

The following checklist is used during graduation to ensure we have not missed anything.

Legal

License

We need to ensure that project owns or otherwise has obtained the ability to release:

  1. The project code, documentation and data has been adequately vetted to assure it is all properly licensed (a.k.aas 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.
  3. Any other legal checks such as trademark and patent
  4. Ability to shut off downloads if any blocking legal issue is found.

Processes

Documented processes:

  1. The project has code under configuration managementcontrol. Eg, subversion, git
  2. The project uses an issue tracker and keeps the status of the issue tracker up to date.
  3. The project has documented its management processes. This is typically done within a Developers Guide or Project Management Plan.
    • The project has a suitable open governance policy ensuring decisions are made, documented and adhered to. Ideally a project management committee established with a process for adding new members
    • The project uses public communication channels for decision making to maintains transparency.Eg archived email lists, public issue tracker, IRC meetings
    • See Documentation and Release Procedure for more information

This checklist can only document process requirements; the goal of the above procedures is to check that the developer community works in a healthy way:

  • Open Development: 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.
  • For those setting up a project steering committee for the first time consider drawing members from developer list, user list and key stakeholders to receive a balanced viewpoint.

Documentation and Release Procedure

We ask that extra care be taken to ensure high quality documentation and releases:

Cameron Shorter comment: Quality requirements have been moved into this section.

  1. The project has user documentation
    • Sufficient detail to guide a new user through performing the core functionality provided by the application.
  2. The project has developer documentation
    • including checkout and build instructions
    • includes commented code. Ideally published for developer use. Examples: javadocs for Java applications, or Sphinx documentation for Python applications
    • Provides sufficient detail for an experience programmer to contribute patches or a new module in accordance with the project's programming conventions.
  3. The project followshas a defined release process
    • Includes executing the testing process before releasing a stable release
  4. The project has an automated build process. Cameron Shorter comment: Covered by following line.
  5. The project follows a documented testing process manages quality.
    • Ideally, this includes both automated and manual testingan automated test system.
    • Ideally this includes a Quality Process with QA metrics and set goals

It is not enough to make and document a release; the goal of the above checklist is to focus team reliability:

  • Ideally we would like a new developer to walk up; follow the instructions and correctly engage the community to build a release
  • 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.
  • Jody Garnett comment: You will need an OSGeo project as a good example before asking for a Quality Process. Example: GeoTools mandates modules obtain 40% code coverage prior to being published

Community

The Foundation is made up of a number of committees, projects and local chapters. This section gathers up information these groups have requested from projects in incubation. Participation is optional but recommended.

Board

The OSGeo Board is responsible for all that goes on here; they do ask that the project make available:

  1. A Project Officer as a contract point
    • This person is established when the incubation committee recomends the project for graduation
    • Your community can change the project officer as needed (just add an agenda item to the next board meeting so they can recognise the change of officer).

Marketing

Access to the Marketing_Committee and promotion is one of the key benefits of joining the foundation - please help them out with the following information.

  1. Requested from the incubation projects (for details see Marketing Artefacts):
    • Application Overview
    • Application Quick Start
    • Logo
    • Graphical Image
  2. Marketing materialartefacts have been created about the project forin 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?)
  3. 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 ms4w, etc.)

Projects

Projects do not exist in isolation; and are expected to communicate and collaborate on key issues. As an example the PostGIS release procedure asks that the release be checked with MapServer, GeoServer and others.

SAC

The System Administration Committee is available to help infrastructure and facilities. Information for this committee is collected as part of the Project Status Template.

  • projectname.osgeo.org
  • OSGeo issue tracker
  • OSGeo mailing list
  • OSGeo svn
  • downloads.osgeo.org
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