Subject: Notes: Transition to Service
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 10:31:31 EDT

I had a lot of trouble with this.  Then I realized that I was
struggling with the gap between what we really do and what I wish we
would do.  So I took a little extra time and wrote this summary of
what I think we do and what I would like us to do.  Not sure if it is
anywhere near what you expected, but it may be useful for you.

Mike

The Athena Group

Our main concern is software going into "service"--i.e., being packaged
and released for use as the Athena Computing Environment.  In most
cases, where we have developed the software here, we tend to expect the
developer to continue as the maintainer.  This simple approach reduces
the "transition" effort, but also hides some major costs, which are
noted mostly when someone leaves the group or a package which has been
working for some time suddenly needs maintenance.

In theory, I would like to see software going into service go through a
review by members of the Athena group to ensure acceptable levels of:

    1.  source code - commented, up to standards, etc.
    2.  programmer's documentation
        - design
        - architecture
        - notes
    3.  agreements on level of support
        - author support
        - bug handling
    4.  plug in to Support handling
        - training needed
        - user documentation (man pages, web, etc.)
        - help desk and consultants briefings

In /afs/dev.mit.edu/source/src-8.1/doc (attach source-8.1, then cd to
/mit/source-8.1) there are several write-ups concerned with the Athena
source tree.

The current process focuses on developers making modifications and
additions to the "source tree" -- the collection of source code.  The
"service" side then compiles and builds the Athena release using that
collection.

Since the "transition to service" is effectively bridged in our group by
having the individual developer also continue as the maintainer, there
is really little that I can point to in the Athena environment that
deals with what is needed to make this transition work well.  We have a
detailed "checklist" that is used when turning over something to the
Athena Server Operations group, because that group has requirements to
make sure that everyone in the group can quickly and easily "come up to
speed" on the services.  But within the Athena development group, the
main approach to "transition to service" is to bundle the developer with
the software.

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