Meta: Late Changes [was: Re: UI freeze break request for GNOME Shell]

[Andre Klapper <ak-47 gmx net>]

On Fri, 2012-10-26 at 14:35 -0400, Shaun McCance wrote:
> Meta: How can we prevent these kinds of late-cycle changes in the
> future? Part of the problem may be implementing from mockups with
> insufficient specification of behavior. But there will always be
> implementation issues you don't anticipate in design specs.
> 
> What about a concerted effort to test implementations against the
> designs immediately following the freeze?

Not trying to blame anybody in particular, but the slow eroding of "UI
Freeze" into "But small UI changes are not affected by the freeze, I
thought!" might have led to developers and designers feeling less bound
to the UI Freeze.
Means: An increase of "small" UI changes committed late in the cycle
(likely without enough testing when there are requests to change
recently introduced behavior once again), instead of defering to the
beginning of the next cycle.
I don't have any numbers to prove my impression, it's just a feeling in
the guts.

Boils down to "faster development pace with more late changes vs. slower
development with more UI stability", and the release-team's duty to
define, document and enforce how strict "UI Freeze" should be
interpreted.

andre
-- 
Andre Klapper  |  ak-47 gmx net
http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/