About this document
This page is a working document mapping out Thalia's plans for upcoming features and release dates. While it provides an outline, it is likely to change as priorities shift and new issues arise. If there's a feature or fix you urgently need, please contact us.
For further background information, please see:
RELEASES
CURRENT RELEASE - Thalia 1.0
The current release is Thalia version 1.0. It represents the work done in Sprint 5, and will be released on April 2nd. It includes many bug fixes, some initial improvements based on feedback from usability testing, improved help section, and will soon also make available Quickstart video help.
Upcoming Release Schedule
JELLYFISH (Sprint 6a)
May 6th
- Key customers:
- PSB: customizations
- OCW: pilot
- PSB shopping cart
- Bulk import to support free-form tags
STINGRAY (Sprint 6b)
June 16th
- Paging (pending on Alfresco. Looks like their current paging mechanism will not meet our needs)
- Research and design Moira groups integration
- Implement group support in thalia (will do moira group import in 7)
- Keyboard support
- Begin redesign exploration, deeper usability follow-up
- Design: required work to make fields allow multi-values (frontend and backend)
ANEMONE (Sprint 7)
September 15th
- Definite:
- Redesign implementation (based on what we come up with in sprint 6)
- Moira groups implementation
- Support multiple values for each field
- Monitoring tools (by our self if necessary, ops if they can)
- Unicode support
- Rights/usage reminder on download
- Maybe:
- Open Source:
- Licensing stuff: find out what it should be
- Cleaning up code: take all source on clean machine, see if instructions are clear and they can build it
- Test impact of using community alfresco
- Refactor front-end code
STARFISH (Sprint 8)
December 8th
- Key customers:
- OCW public release
- Stellar release
- Definite:
- Touchstone to support external users (available September)
- Skinning:
- ability to embed Thalia in Stellar & PSB
- color scheme customization?
- Back/home button takes you to home application
- Slideshows 1.0
- Save As Slideshow from album, search results, library
- Federated searching: Rotch Library at least
- Maybe:
- Annotations
- Workflow (need to define what this means for customers requesting it)
- Expanded federated searching
OCTOPUS:
Operations changes and improvements, on a parallel track with Thalia development work.
- SAN will arrive end of december
Past Releases
Sprint 4 Changes - release planned 1/28/08
Implement new access control rules
Finish metadata changes
Add freeform tags
Downloadable slide show
XML schema research
Make bulk upload more usable
Reduce the bug list
Sprint 3 - release planned for 12/18/07
Overhauled navigator UI
Alfresco clustering (may move to Sprint 4)
About this Roadmap and Planning Releases
What is a project roadmap?
It's a rough plan of upcoming releases and what changes they'll contain. Those changes may be new features, or bug fixes, or behind-the-scenes improvements.
How are Thalia versions planned? What determines which changes are in a release?
We may want to add a new feature, especially one users have been asking for. Sometimes a new feature requires other changes. We might make those changes in one release and add the new feature in a later one.
When planning each release, we include a set of bugs to fix. We prioritize bugs based on its impact on the user; the worst bugs go to the head of the line. If a bug is discovered during testing, it may take precedence and bump other planned work to a later release. Sometimes a bugfix is trivial, and a developer will do it in the course of other changes.
Thalia will be used by other MIT services, such as Stellar. We implement some features based on the downstream service's needs and schedule.
There are two programmers behind Thalia's wizardry, each with a specialty. It may seem like something less urgent is included in a release while something more urgent was deferred. This may be because the developer who would make the change is already fully scheduled for a release.
Finally, project plans may be affected by vendors. Thalia uses some third-party software to power storage. We may incorporate a vendor's software updates in a release, or defer a feature until a later release of the vendor's software.
In short, the plan changes as development and testing takes place. We base releases off of the plan, but adapt to respond as needs and circumstance arise.
The roadmap is not a commitment. If there's a feature or fix you urgently need, please contact us. We take customer needs into account as we plan, and we need to hear from you.
What's a Sprint?
When we plan a new version, we divide the work up into chunks. A sprint is one chunk of work. Each sprint lasts about six weeks. This allows us to release changes in small, controlled batches. As a result, the releases are easier to test and more stable. Customers can use new features as soon as they're done, instead of waiting until next semester.