pm/PROCESS.md

Work Tracking and Project Management Process

Motivation and Goal

Provide a clear visibility to anyone (CCs or not) of:

• What work is planned
• What work is in progress
• What work is done

Software properties are considered delivered when:

• it is ready-to-use
• the behaviour is documented in specifications
• the software has been used (dogfooding) by the Waku team

See Waku Methodology (draft) for more.

Team Structure

The Waku team is currently organized in the following subteams:

• Core Research
• nwaku
• js-waku
• Chat/App Dev
• Chat/App Research
• Business Dev

Documents

• Waku FURPS
• Waku Milestones

Terminology and Scope

FURPS

FURPS are used to define software behaviour and property. They are defined as:

• F: Functionality
• U: Usability
• R: Reliability
• P: Performance
• S: Supportability

Moreover:

• A set of FURPS define the behaviour of a specific protocol implementation or feature.
• "a FURPS" refers to an individual FURPS statement (e.g. "S1. available in libwaku").
• For every P (Performance) there must be a Grafana panel (pointed to fleet), and a Vac-DST simulation to sign-off the P (search for “Vac-DST”).
• For every R (Reliability) there should be a test suite by Vac-QA that sign-off the R in unreliable network environment (search for “Vac-QA”); and potentially a Grafana panel (pointed to fleet), and a Vac-DST simulation (if relevant).

Feature

A feature is a specific domain of Waku software behaviour. It can be a protocol, or a set of closely-related protocols. It has one related set of FURPS.

For example, "End-to-end reliability" is a feature that refers to the SDS protocol.

Deliverable

A deliverable is the work tackled by one subteam in regards to one FURPS set. In other words, it tracks the delivery of specific FURP(S), for one feature, by one subteam.

For example:

Light Push FURPS

• F1. Light push returns itemized error code when the service node cannot forward a message.
• S1. nwaku service node
• S2. Browser edge node

To track the work to achieve these FURPS, two deliverables should be created:

1. [nwaku] Support error code in light push: Implement Light Push FURPS F1, S1.
2. [js-waku] Support error code in light push: Implement Light Push FURPS F1, S2.

When the work is not related to software behaviour (e.g. a contributor guide, some BD activities), then a deliverable is used to define the expected output, without referring to specific FURPS.

Deliverables are owned by one, and only one, subteam. If a deliverable's execution depends on a group external to Waku, then it should be explicitly stated.

Milestone

A Milestone define a completion date and effort estimate for a collection of deliverables, across one or several subteams.

Task

A task is a piece of work necessary to a deliverable. A task may be defined as a checkbox, or a GitHub issue. It is up to a subteam to decide how they organize their tasks (e.g. whether to use epics, issues per task, etc).

Rules

Here are some rules to ensure the efficacy of our process. What is not explicitly defined is left to the subteam's choice.

A Milestone:

• MUST have a GitHub Milestone in https://github.com/waku-org/pm repo, to which relevant FURPS statements or Deliverables are added.
• MUST have an estimated date of completion
• MUST have an effort estimate, stating how many CCs are needed to work on this for a given half-year (e.g. one research, half an engineer)

A Deliverable:

• MUST be defined as an issue in the https://github.com/waku-org/pm repo.
• MUST be included in its parent Milestone.
• MUST have an Output section in the description detailing the result of work of the Deliverable, this may be a list of FURPS.
• MUST have only one owner, assigned to the GitHub issue.

Finally, for Tasks that do not belong to a Deliverable:

• MUST either qualify as (with related GitHub labels)
  • bug - bugs reported by users or discovered internally, SHOULD be linked back to a corresponding FURPS and Milestone
  • test - maintaining and fixing broken tests, SHOULD ideally be linked back to a corresponding FURPS and Milestone
  • release - work related to releasing version upgrades.
  • dependencies - work related to releasing version upgrades.

Responsibilities

Task	Does it	Ensure it's done
Set Milestones, FURPS and Deliverables in master document	Waku Lead	Insights
Create GitHub milestones in pm repo	Program Manager	Waku Lead
Create Deliverables issues in pm repo	Team Leads	Program Manager
Create issues, PR (tasks) and link them to FURPS	Team Member	Team Lead
Close Deliverables	Waku Lead	Program Manager
Handover to Vac-QA, Vac-DST	Team Lead	Vac PoCs
Proceed with Dogfooding	Team Lead	Waku Lead

Waku Lead: @fryorcraken Program Manager: @chair28980 Team Lead: @plopezlpz @Ivansete-status @jm-clius @weboko @jazzz VAC PoC: @jm-clius, @stubbsta for Vac-DST