Topic on Talk:Release Management RFP/2013/NicheWork and Hallo Welt!

During the IRC Q&A, RobLa said he "actually prefers focus on excellence in the release process itself as the main goal here, rather than shiny new features."

I agree this is an important focus and since I've been managing it for the past couple of releases, I'll point out some areas that need improvement:

RC testing

While there was some release testing, there wasn't a formal effort to QA the release.

Breaking changes

skinning in 1.17, resource loader

no one is charged with making sure extensions work.

formal release timelines

Some work on this has been done, but we need a formal pre-release process. The release timeline needs to be formalized.

To be clear, these are the core areas that need focus for release management. Markus and I see this position as the "people on point for MediaWiki" to start engaging the MediaWiki-using community and addressing their issues (installation, upgrades, skinning, extensions) that the WMF hasn't really focused on or had a direct interest in.