Modules/DevelopmentManagementTasks

Development Management Tasks

The following represents the tasks related to the development coordinator as well as chief architect roles. Based on our current capabilities we split them in three groups:

• Feature / code / design review.
• Release, bug tracker, communication.
• Documentation, forum, new contributors/onboarding, infrastructure

Review

• Assign appropriate reviewers to patches
• Make sure patches are not ignored too long
• Review contributions on a high level
• Help code reviews stuck on design or decisions get unstuck
• Read and review design docs
• Come up with alternative designs when needed

Release Management

• Define and communicate roadmaps
• Keep track of all tasks that need to be done for release
• Reorganize and close tasks on projects.blender.org to reflect current status
• Assign release tasks to developers
• Talk to developers to ensure they are working on the release targets
• Make decisions on what is safe to add in the current release
• Make sure manual is in a ready state

Development Planning

• Help decide which major features to focus on
• Find developers to work on important features that are not assigned to anyone
• Help define vision for how to do these new features, work through design with developers
• Ensure module owners are organizing and communicating development of their module well and help as needed

Follow Development

• Keep eye on commits for any problematic code changes
• Keep eye on usability or design issues introduced by commits
• Follow up with developers and designers to ensure issues get fixed
• Ensure daily builds stay stable, and that major breakage is fixed immediately
• Ensure tests keep passing, poke developers when they break
• Understand what developers are spending time on

Bug Tracker

• Follow bug tracker reports on a high level
• Set priorities to low / medium / high so developers focus on important things
• Help bug triagers to resolve tricky reports and define policy for how to handle reports
• Ensure bug tracker remains friendly on-topic place, deal with rude users or developers
• Help bug fixes get unstuck when needed (Brecht)

Communication

• Write meeting notes, ensure all developers have weekly reports
• Write weekly overview of new features and changes
• Write blog posts on code.blender.org
• Coordinate with web team
• Organize Blender conference and other presentations

Team

• Organize and lead weekly meeting on blender.chat
• Set up meetings between developers if issues need to be worked out
• Talk to developers to see if things are going ok, what to improve
• Detect when developers are stuck too long on things, and find solutions
• Onboarding of new developers and other employees
• Make sure developers have software and hardware they need
• Keep Ton in the loop on important decisions and things happening in development

Contributors

• Answer new developer questions on devtalk
• Answer new developer questions on chat
• Set up commit rights for developers and explain rules
• Keep close eye on new committers to ensure they are following guidelines
• Guide and encourage contributors to work on topics that fit Blender’s goals

Forums

• Answer users questions or get the right person to answer them
• Moderate forums to stay on topic, handle flags
• Warn or ban users when they show bad behavior
• Pass on information to relevant developers when needed

Docs

• Ensure release notes are complete, poke devs who don't update
• Define overall structure of release notes, ensure consistency and fill in blanks
• Keep eye on Blender manual changes to ensure correctness and completion
• Help manual writers understand Blender features and release process
• Keep developer wiki documentation up to date

Development Infrastructure

• When any developer website or infrastructure goes down, organize it to get fixed
• Keep track which infrastructure is working well, and where problems are
• Lead any development infrastructure changes
• Make decision with sysadmin on infrastructure setup and policies
• Create wiki, blog and other accounts for developers
• Organize better continuous integration and testing infrastructure
• Organize improvements to projects.blender.org