Introduction to Our Development Cycle

[richardolsson]

Three production phases

Each major feature that we develop is divided into three phases, that align somewhat with our release cycle.

Phase 1: Discovery

In this phase, we research and discuss a new feature, drawing from user analytics and research, our own experience and external requirements. The outputs from this phase are:

• Individual GitHub discussions for each feature
• "Job stories" in every discussion

Phase 2: UX/UI

In this phase, we design a user experience that meets all the requirements identified in phase 1. We collaborate and iterate on the user interface in the discussions. The outputs from this phase are:

• "Epic" GitHub issues, containing:
  • GitHub issues that have been reasonably scoped for development (not too big)
  • Wireframes with references to well-known MUI components, or
  • Screen designs only when necessary

Phase 3: Development

In this phase we build the feature based on the specification from phase 2. Each issue created during phase 2 becomes a pull request that is peer-reviewed before being merged into the product. The outputs from this phase are:

• Features according to specification
• Unit tests, integration tests, or both

Release cycle

We do not use "sprints" in the sense that we do not have a fixed-length release cycle. But we do focus on one release at a time during a period of time, usually somewhere between 4-10 weeks.

While we're developing (phase 3) features for one release, we are simultaneously preparing for development (phase 1 and 2) of features for the next release.

[richardolsson]

Thoughts on the process, collected during first trial, to be discussed ahead of next cycle:

• Wireframes need to be discussed more than what is comfortable in Issues. Maybe we should stay in Discussions through phase 2?
• Add section to the "task" issue template for "relevant job stories" to refer back to epic
• Add section to the "task" issue template for "preprequisites" to help developers decide whether the codebase is ready for a certain task yet
• Will add more thoughts as they come to me…

[richardolsson]

@djbusstop will add the new sections to the task template

[djbusstop]

DONE!

[richardolsson]

No longer relevant since we switched to the FaST Agile methodology.