Issue Creation and Prioritization

The JWQL development team uses GitHub Issues and GitHub projects for tracking development tasks and their progress. This wiki page describes how to properly assign and prioritize new GitHub issues.

A new GitHub issue should be created for any item of work that will eventually correspond to a change in the jwql repository, including the code base itself, tests, conda environment, repository documentation, notebooks, etc. Additionally, new issues should also be created for any tasks that may not result in changes to the repository, but requires significant effort by JWQL developers (e.g. "Ask ITSD for a new server", "Create presentation for TIPS", etc.)

Issues are prioritized based on several factors:

• The current FTE availability of members of the dev team, particularly if the issue pertains to a specific domain or instrument, or requires a specific skill set.
• The urgency of the issue in regards to keeping the JWQL application and its features usable.
• The usefulness and impact of the issue (i.e. does solving the issue result in a new or improved feature that impacts most users?)

The JWQL technical lead considers these factors when prioritizing issues. They then decided which issues get worked on before others, and in particular, which issues get included in the next release cycle.