Wikimedia Apps/Team/iOS/Development Cycle

iOS Development Process with phases

The following is an outline of the team's standard process. It is important to ensure that everyone has a shared understanding of what each phase means. There are no pre-set dates or durations for phases, as the team will discuss timing as they work and agree together on when to move from one phase to the next.

1. Stories and Scope
   • Create initial board with epic stories
2. Design Research
   • Comparative analysis
   • Inclusive participation plan
   • Present design proposal
   • Fill in epics
3. Exploratory Stage
   • Engineers research and experiment with design, deliver prototypes for testing
   • Initial evaluative user testing
     • Ensure targeted audience (disability, marginalized identities, etc) testing
   • Assess accessibility requirements
   • Most major unknowns should be identified, remaining work is understood
4. Development
   • Most functionality delivered to internal users
   • Scope trimmed to final size (remove tickets from board as necessary)
   • Stress test new features. Think of the worst case scenarios (for example, thousands of saved articles) and build debug tools that create those scenarios. Use the Instruments app to diagnose performance issues and ensure the app's memory footprint doesn't grow unbounded
   • Test with targeted audiences
5. Feature Freeze
   • Only minor bugs and edge cases remain or added are to scope
   • Evaluative design work completed and ticketed
   • Initial QA and design review completed on all epics
   • File a ticket for performance and stress testing with Instruments. Explore the app for regressions.
   • File tickets for release management.
6. Code Freeze
   • Do pre-release smoke test and beta
   • Monitor beta release crash reports for at least three days before another beta release
   • Remove all “nice to haves” from the board
   • All tickets are well defined
   • Only new tickets come from QA or tester feedback
   • Create a new branch from develop named as the version number for the release; any changes to the release are done as pull requests/patches targeted to this branch
   • Finalize marketing messages and materials, update app store assets
7. Release Call
   • Final check with engineers
   • Actual release happens
   • Release notes publicized
   • Documentation updated
8. Release
   • See Release Process

Rituals

These meetings ensure that the team maintains regular communication and has time for planning and board upkeep.

Name	Frequency	Duration	Description	Goals	Special guests
Board Grooming	Mondays	25 min	Team meets to clean up the currently active release boards or the backlog.	Triage tasks and/or Groom tasks	n/a
Combined Apps standup	Mondays	30 min	Team meets with the Android team and support members to call out any dependencies or blockers.	Sync up on current work Identify and share blockers	QA CRS
Weekly Planning	Tuesdays	50 min	Team meets to set up a plan for the week, check on development phase/release board status, and make sure support members are informed.	Decide on scope Update the board Document action items	data analyst QA (optional)
Slack standup	Wednesdays, Fridays	n/a	Team responds to a Slack bot reminder to report on what they did yesterday and what they are doing today.	Share what you've worked on Share what you'll be working on Share what's blocking you	n/a
Task Sync + Tea Time	Thursdays	60 min	Team meets to review tasks in progress and dive into blockers. Tea time is social time for non-work related conversation.	Update the board Discuss issues Chat with teammates	data analyst (optional)
Retrospective	every other week on Thursdays	30 min	Team meets to reflect on past two weeks, celebrate successes, and consider improvements	Discuss what's working well Discuss what could be improved Establish next steps to implement change	as needed