Page History

Scope

• Feature Life Cycle Management includes features being subject to a Planning Cycle:
  • new features are planned and specified before being developed and included in future releases.
  • having passed the Planning Cycle new features are subjec to a Development Cycle.
• This article describes
  • the policy for feature planning
  • the mapping to the respective status in the Change Management System.
• Further resources for life cycle management
• Ongoing development means that features may eventually be replaced by alternative functions - i.e. they become deprecated. 
• See 
  • for the overall Product Life Cycle see Release Policy - Product Life Cycle Management
  • for information about release availability and maintenance see 
  • Release Policy - Platform availability and support
• This article describes our policy for handling this situation and minimizing the implications this can have for users.

Life Cycle

Planned features will pass through following states:

Open

• Deprecation announcements will be included with each release if applicable.
• Deprecated features will continue to be supported after the deprecation announcement, for the lifetime of the current release.

Clarify

• End of support announcements will be included with each release if applicable.
• With the following release a deprecated feature becomes an unsupported feature, i.e. should problems occur then they will not be fixed.
• The functionality is still usable.

Dismissed, Accepted or Known Issue

• Feature removal announcements will be included with each release if applicable.
• Unsupported features may be completely removed from future releases.

Deferred (from Accepted)

Example

the begin-of-life cylce with the following status before a decision is taken whether they will be developed or not:

Status
colour Yellow title OPEN

• A feature or bug has been added but might not yet be assigned to any developer or release.
• Open issues are assigned a release and are worked on in the course of this release.
• The next step will be to CLARIFY the feature, i.e. to collect requirements and to decide on future development.

Status
colour Yellow title CLARIFY

• The feature or bug has to be specified before any further status is assigned. This includes to check the validity of requirements and the feasibility.
• Issues for clarification are assigned a release and are worked on in the course of this release.
• Users are invited to vote for the feature and to comment by adding use cases and requirements that help to specify the feature.
• Subsequent to clarification the feature will then be ACCEPTED or DEFERRED for development, or it will be DISMISSED or classified as KNOWN ISSUE without further action.

Status
colour Green title KNOWN ISSUE

• The feature or bug is classified as a known issue, i.e. as an inconvenience with a valid workaround available, and will by purpose not be changed.
• Known issues are not assigned a release.
• Being a known issue is an end status for a feature, therefore no further action will be taken.
• The issue is assigned one of the resolutions
  • the feature works as designed (resolution: works as designed).
  • the issue not being fixed (resolution: won't fix).

Status
colour Green title DISMISSED

• The feature or bug is dismissed, e.g. due to architectural constraints or invalid requirements. The feature is not considered for future development.
• Dismissed Issues are assigned a release and are worked on in the course of this release.
• Being dismissed is an end status for a feature, therefore no further action will be taken.
• The issue is assigned one of the resolutions:
  • the feature works as designed (resolution: works as designed).
  • the issue is caused by misconfiguration or misapprehension of the underlying functionality (resolution: bogus).
  • the issue not being fixed (resolution: won't fix).
  • the issue duplicating an issue and being resolved with that issue (resolution: duplicate)
  • the feature requirements being incomplete (resolution: incomplete).
  • the bug cannot be reproduced (resolution: cannot reproduce). 

Status
colour Yellow title ACCEPTED

• The feature or bug includes valid requirements and is accepted for development with the assigned release.
• Subsequently the feature will proceed through the Development Cycle, see Release Policy - Development Cycle.

Status
colour Blue title DEFERRED

• The feature will be considered for development in a future release.
• However, the feature is not assigned to a release. Instead, the feature is deferred for later consideration.
• The issue has no resolution assigned (resolution: Unresolved). Therefore the issue can be voted by the users in order for the company to prioritize these issues for future releases
• Lifecycle
  • A feature is announced as being deprecated with release 1.8:
    • This feature will still be included in all maintenance releases1.8.1, 1.8.2 etc.
  • This feature will then be announced as being unsupported from release 1.9:
    • This feature will still be included in all maintenance releases 1.9.1, 1.9.2 etc.
    • Support will not be provided if an unsupported feature should break in a release 1.9 or later
  • This feature may be removed in a subsequent release such as 1.10 or later.
• Please note:
• The period between releases will usually be around three months.
This means that you will have about six months to modify your configuration and to upgrade to replacement features.