Support Hat

This page documents the process for support of the user community via the mail lists.

Rotation

There will be a two week rotation wearing the support hat - this will run Tuesday to Tuesday+2 to tie in with the mygrid meetings. During the handover meeting, we'll review the new entries on JIRA and schedule them in for future release as appropriate. I'll set an initial rota which won't take into account other travel/holiday commitments etc., so if it clashes, please negotiate with others to swap slots and update accordingly. Please business as usual until we've sorted all this out.

Responsibilities while on support rota

While wearing the support hat, the individual's responsibilities are to:

• ensure that all requests on both lists are responded to in a timely manner (half a working day reasonable?),
• investigate posts to determine whether they are query, bug or feature request (including clarifying posts when they are unclear),
• allocate queries to the most appropriate party if they are not able to answer themselves & ensure that the query is answered by the allocated party - ONLIST and JIRA.
• raise JIRA items to cover anything that's not immediately resolved by the response to the post. (i.e. bugs, feature request or long queries), with appropriate information to allow them to be investigated later,
• update relevant documentation to clarify the query where necessary (including FAQ)
• review any unresolved items for the support period in the handover meeting
• in the event that an issue raised requires an emergency fix, the support hat person would be the default person to resolve it. If there is a natural candidate for that fix who is someone other than the support hat then this can be negotiated - an emergency fix should be a rare occurrence - we have bug fixing periods scheduled in after releases which override these support arrangements at those times.
• check with the instigator that their query has been resolved by the response (and close JIRA queries when this is confirmed)
• IMPORTANT: (As this is the biggest change from the initial proposal) while on support hat but not dealing with queries, to continue with "scheduled development" work as previously allocated.
• Pass on requests for other institutions which aren't answered on the list itself by members of that institution.

Responsibilities while NOT on support rota

While you're not wearing the support hat:

• still to respond to questions if you feel appropriate - this should be done ONLIST so that the support hat person can see it has been done.
• answer queries allocated to you on JIRA and copy ONLIST
• help out the support hat person when asked

Rota staff and order

• Stuart
• David
• Tom
• Ian
• Stian
• Alan

Rota slots

Beginning with Stuart on 2007-05-01, the rota slots are filled in sequentially by the Rota staff order and put into the Google calendar myGrid support hat.

At least everyone on the rota staff list should be listed as administrators of the calendar and have access to the above mentioned link. Contact June or Stian if not.

To swap a slot, find someone who is willing to take your slot and swap in the calendar.

What's missing at the moment

In support for this, we need

• a new category of query in JIRA OUTSTANDING
• an initial run through of the current JIRA issue backlog to allocate to particular releases DONE (except Provenance)
• stick to a six month major release (followed by +3 week bug fix release) with intermediate releases on the 2 and 4 month points. OUTSTANDING
• move meeting start time back to 10.00 to accomodate JIRA reviews DONE