Running the Endgame

Each iteration closes with an endgame.

Duties of the endgame champion

Proactive communication is key to a smooth and successful endgame.

• Create the endgame plan and update the schedule (see template below and potentially last month's schedule)
• Discuss the endgame plan in Monday's planning call
  • Find an endgame buddy in the other lab
  • Remind people to update their testing availability and platform(s) in the call and release channel
• Communicate in the release Slack channel every day about the plan, progress, TODOs and any other important notifications.
  • Tidy up milestone (PRs, Issues, Feature Requests missing labels)
  • Availability of the insiders build
  • Testing to be done (Test Plan Items, Verifications)
  • Fixing Bugs / Candidates & Writing Documentation
  • Sanity testing and releasing.
• Track progress and update the endgame plan by checking off the checklist items.
• Coordinate with the buddy by communicating the progress and expected jobs to be done.
• Adjust schedule, particularly the publishing dates, based on defects found, fixes made, holidays, vacations, etc.
• Update the endgame process/template with the improvements/fixes that you learn in the current endgame.

Endgame Plan

The template for the Endgame plan is here. Endgame champ can create the endgame plan for a given milestone from the Endgame Duty website.

This will create the endgame plan for the selected milestone. All you have to do after is to update the release and endgame dates.

Recovery Release

We release one or more recovery builds with a handful of critical fixes and translation updates a few days after a release. The candidate fixes are reviewed by the development team and are assigned to a recovery milestone. We want to be restrictive about the included candidates. The mindset is "we will lose users if we do not include the fix". Here are some examples:

• data loss
• a regression that users complain loudly about in issues or Twitter
• a significant performance regression
• an issue that impacts many users as indicated by telemetry data
• an embarrassing UI glitch
• critical security fixes (see Patch Tuesday Release Endgame Template below)
• an issue that impacts extensions or is an API regression

Recovery Endgame Plan

Create the Endgame plan using the template and update the placeholders with appropriate data.