<%inherit file="body.html"/> <%namespace name="util" file="util.html"/> <%def name="title()"> About

About

Linaro is a huge project participating in many open source communities and working on a whole host of improvements for the embedded Linux on ARM space. Monitoring all this good work and ensuring deliverables are on track is the task of status.linaro.org. This site uses Linaro's preferred method of requirements capture, the Launchpad Blueprint, to closely track engineering progress towards its goals.

For more information on Blueprints please see the Linaro wiki article: Process/Blueprints.

How to use this site

Navigation

Across the top of this site is the navigation bar. This can be used to see progress of the organisation as a whole or to drill down to specific information such as team and individual work items. If at any time you wish to return to the home page, please use the 'Overview' button.

Burndown Charts

For an explanation of Work Items please see the Linaro wiki article: Process/WorkItemsHowto.

Linaro engineering is done in cycles, each of which is six months in length. This site shows information for the current cycle. To help visualise the work being done in a cycle Linaro uses burndown charts. Burndown charts are a part of the Agile SCRUM methodology, tracking individual items of work to their completion. The number of work items are shown in the form of a bar chart and colour coding is used to show the state. The states that are tracked in Linaro's burndown charts are:

TODO
- team: Items to do by the team.
- foreign: Items to be done by someone outside of the team but contributing to a Linaro project.
BLOCKED
- team: Items to do by the team that are currenty blocked on something.
- foreign: Items to be done by someone outside of the team but contributing to a Linaro project that are currently blocked on something.
INPROGRESS
- team: Items to do by the team and have been started, but not completed.
- foreign: Items to be done by someone outside of the team but contributing to a Linaro project that have started, but are not complete.
DONE
- team: Completed items done by the team.
- foreign: Completed items done by someone outside the team, but contributing to a Linaro project.
POSTPONED
- team: Items that are to be done by the team which will not be done in the current cycle.
- foreign: Items to be done by someone outside of the team but contributing to a Linaro project that will not be done in the current cycle.

Burndown charts also show the trajectory of team effort. The black line shows ideal progress which, if adhered to, will result in all work items being completed on time.

An example of a burndown chart. The x axis shows time, and the y axis shows the number of workitems. The bars show the number of workitems left to do at each point. The chart continues past the current date to the end of the cycle. A straight black line is drawn from the number of workitems to do at the start of the cycle until zero at the end of the cycle. This line is called the trend line, and shows an idealised progress. Comparing the current number of workitems to do and the recent trend shows whether the project is on track for completion by the end of the cycle

Technical Requirements

For an explanation of how the requirements process works please see: Releases/RequirementsProcessHowto.

Linaro uses the concept of technical requirements to drive its engineering effort. At the start of every six month cycle a set of achievable goals are put forward by the Technical Steering Committee and the Linaro organisation attempts to deliver on them. Technical Requirements are further broken down into Blueprints and finally Work Items. Technical Requirements can be made up from several Blueprints, each of which contributes to the overall goal.

An example section of the overview page of this site. It shows several Technical Requirements, with a progress bar showing how complete they are, along with their priority and a description or status note.

Clicking on any Technical Requirement gives you more information on requirement itself including who is working on it, the Blueprints that make it up and the current progress.

An example of a Technical Requirement overview. Several parts of the page are highlighted. At the top is a burndown chart showing progress towards that TR over time. Below that is a progress bar showing the current completion as a percentage. Next comes a table showing the engineering blueprints that contribute to the TR, with their progress and summaries. After that is a table showing the people that are working on the TR, along with the counts of workitems that they have completed and have left to do. Lastly there is a table listing every workitem, showing the state and assignee for each.