MDMC Software Management

Note

This section is only relevant to active developers of MDMC, rather than general contributors.

Currently the agile development process of this package is most close to Kanban.

Priorities

All issues are assigned a priority label. Theses are inspired by Quantified Task Management.

P5: (IMMEDIATE) For emergencies. Drop everything and fix this issue.

P4: (IMPORTANT) Top priority in the development cycle, except for emergencies.

P3: (NORMAL) Should be completed in current development cycle.

P2: (SOONISH) Might be completed in current development cycle but not essential.

P1: (EVENTUAL) For future development cycles.

P0: (OPTIONAL) May not ever be completed.

PT: (TRIAGE) Yet to be prioritised.

By default, all newly created issues will have priority PT. Issue contributors are instructed not to assign priorities, as this should be done by active developers.

Pipelines

New Issues

All newly created issues should go here. An active developer should then determine:

  • the priority of the issue;

  • and if it needs to be included in the current development cycle or not (move to Backlog if yes, move to Icebox if no).

Icebox

Issues which will not be worked on in the current development cycle. No issue with a priority higher than P2 should be put in the Icebox. Before a new development cycle, Icebox issues should be checked to determine if they should be moved to Backlog.

Backlog

Issues worked on during the current development cycle. No issue with a priority lower than P2 should be in the Backlog. Issues should be ordered based on priority i.e. all P5 at the top, all P2 at the bottom.

In Progress

Issues that are being worked on should be moved to the In Progress pipeline; this helps protect against duplication of effort and reduces the likelihood two developers will be working on the same part of the codebase. Issues that are In Progress may or may not have an associated pull request (PR).

Review/QA

Issues should be moved to Review/QA once they have a PR which has a reviewer allocated.

Closed

Issues which are closed will automatically move to this pipeline.