Galasa team retrospective Oct 2023

We used a mural here: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVMtLuwZ4=/

Bad points/things we didn't do well/need to stop doing

• CLI cobra commands still aren't unit tested, makes for awkard development not knowing when commands are broken

• Having more stories planned prior to the iteration kickoff. Need a few planning meetings to sort out the backlog

• Struggling a bit with 3 people working together, would rather 2 or working alone

• Authentication put on hold while internal project is in flight

• Having half of the IBM team redirected onto other work 👍

• It would be good if there was a regular (monthly) blog on Galasa subjects

• Youtube videos and blog

• Give access to eamon and savvas for galasa prod

• Increase publicity

• Not enough people outside of core group contributing 👍

• Look to see how we can gain more contributors.

• Need alternative to CICSk8s to run our helm charts

• Reserve some time in the iteration for sorting out IVT tests to stop them failing.

• OMP not giving us access to an IBM cloud account

• We require OMP LPAR to run our IVTs

• Not got the ability to see or run security scans yet on LF

• There are references to Eclipse on galasa.dev web site. Can we retire eclipse support ?

• OMP taking a long time to get an IBM cloud account sorted. - Had to migrate to a different account temporarily = extra work

Ideas

• Potentially advertise to a wider audience than mainframe people? ie universities?
• Mark new issues as "good first issue" to avoid having to go back through issues and hopefully attract new contributors?
• Labelling Github issues as "first issue" to help those that are starting out
• Will may be able to reach out ?

Good points/things we did well/things we should continue to do

• Getting the Galasa channels on OMP
• There is activity on the Galasa slack workspace showing people using Galasa actively
• Development has not been greatly impacted despite other item taking priority
• savvas helping Holly and Fiona out 👍
• Mike and Savvas's video that can be turned into a blog post
• Great progress adding more functionality to CLI tools
• Demo as part of the meeting to capture CPS properties
• Copyright changes all went very well
• Scrum and Iteration Meetings in the open are going well
• CLI tool commands for properties CRUD - no more manual etcdctl commands!
• Design meeting required to look at the problem of bumping release versions
• More interest in using Galasa internally - successfully answered several questions and walked users through setup (ecosystem and CLI)
• Hold retrospectives in the open over zoom
• The cluster migration has been successful
• Talks about making Galasa more recognised through blogs/videos
• Team is very flexible in changing the order of tasks during an iteration

Actions we are going to do to sort some of those out

It would be good if there was a regular (monthly) blog on Galasa subjects
Youtube videos and blog
Give access to eamon and savvas for galasa prod

• Increase publicity

  • Not enough people outside of core group contributing 👍
    • Look to see how we can gain more contributors.

• Need alternative to CICSk8s to run our helm charts

• Reserve some time in the iteration for sorting out IVT tests to stop them failing.

• OMP team actions

  • OMP not giving us access to an IBM cloud account
  • We require OMP LPAR to run our IVTs
  • Not got the ability to see or run security scans yet on LF
  • OMP taking a long time to get an IBM cloud account sorted. - Had to migrate to a different account temporarily = extra work

• There are references to Eclipse on galasa.dev web site. Can we retire eclipse support ?

  • This is a TSC questionm, adding to the agenda for the next TSC meeting

14-11-2023 TSC Meeting Minutes

Agenda items:

• Galasa publicity (GSE UK feedback, GSE Virtual, blogs etc.)
• Have we followed through with Galasa Slack Channel? Is it now closed?
• OMP and IBM Cloud - what is the progress?
• Eclipse Plug-In - what is the future of the plug-in? Make a decision if we get quorum.
• What are the development team working on?
• Blockers to delivery
• AOB

Story

As a potential contributor to the Galasa project, I want to know the rules of engagement with the project are fair, just and transparent, so I can properly decide whether to participate or not.

Background

Here is the Zowe Charter creation - https://github.com/zowe/community/blob/master/Technical-Steering-Committee/charter.md

galasa-tsc-charter.md

Attached is the Zowe charter for us to amend and put a skeleton charter in place.

A Galasa charter needs to be small, as we can always change it later.

It should include:

• behaviour rules
• how you get to be a contributor
• how you get a vote on the TSC

We need to decide where to publish it:
For example:

• In the galasa-dev docs ?
• On the TSC github pages site ?

Tasks

• Review the zowe and other project charters for inspiration
• Draft the Galasa charter
• Review the charter with interested parties for comment
• Ratify the charter at a TSC meeting
• Publish the charter somewhere (TBD)
• Link from every readme in the code to these documents so people are signposted there easily.

12-09-2023 TSC Meeting Minutes

Agenda items:

• Announcement of Galasa - Press Release etc.
• Galasa publicity (conferences, blogs etc.)
• Galasa Slack Channel – vote on whether to move from separate Galasa workspace to OMP workspace.
• Let the TSC know that the Galasa Iteration Meetings and thrice-weekly scrums have now been set up and have public access. Ask if anyone else wants to be included so Louisa can add to the meeting list.
• Roadmap from Mike C on future items looking ahead.
• What are the development team currently working on?
• Blockers to delivery?
• AOB

15-08-2023 TSC Meeting Minutes

Agenda items:

• Announcement of Galasa by OMP planning
• Galasa publicity (conferences, blogs etc.)
• Confirmation on voting members of the TSC – Louisa to run down the list and check we have everybody that should be voting members
• Discussion on open scrum, for example when they should happen, who should they include, and how often?
• Roadmap from Mike C on future items looking ahead
• What are the development team currently working on?
• Blockers to delivery?
• Galasa Slack Channel – vote on whether to move from separate Galasa workspace to OMP workspace.
• Dom (shipping IVP’s in a Galasa format)
• Louisa can't attend next TSC, who can chair?
• AOB

Attendees:

• Dom Starkey
• Eamonn Mansour
• Savvas Kyriacou
• Petr Plavjanik
• Louisa Seers

Minutes

• An announcement is planned for September 7th.
• Galasa's participation in upcoming events: TechXchange in September, GSE UK in October/November, FINOS in November, and a Virtual GSE Conference in February.
• Galasa Day on September 5th is cancelled due to a clash with the September 7th press release.
• Next development iteration is aimed for the 28th, with timing, days, and participants to be determined. Iteration planning will be held every other week.
• Development team is focused on enhancing security through an authentication piece, preparing for various test case scenarios with more control over access, creating access tokens via a web UI, and addressing infrastructure challenges related to ecosystem changes. There's consideration of moving infrastructure into the OMP (Open Mainframe Project).
• A call is scheduled with OMP to discuss transitioning Galasa's infrastructure, with an emphasis on moving away from IBM infrastructure for better build capabilities.
• Continuous development work is being carried out on the CLI tool, with more detailed roadmap items expected from Mike.
• No significant blockers for delivery have been reported.
• Plans to push out the Galasa Slack Workspace are underway, awaiting formal voting at the next TSC (Technical Steering Committee) meeting.
• Discussion about adding facilities within Galasa to simplify sign-on for TSO and CICS without manual coding, potentially benefiting Macro4 in creating IVPs in Galasa format, streamlining current lengthy processes.
• Use of GitHub projects as a Kan Ban board for issue tracking, open for public participation, promoting transparency in raising and addressing issues. (https://github.com/orgs/galasa-dev/projects/3/views/1)

we would like to discuss the future of the eclipse plugin within eclipse, potential removal and how that affects the project and community

As per this issue: openmainframeproject/tac#584, Galasa has to have the annual review in April.

The guidance: https://tac.openmainframeproject.org/process/review_cycle

I have created a PPT and uploaded it here to keep track of the PPT: https://github.com/galasa-dev/TSC/blob/main/artifacts/Galasa-Annual-Review-April-2024.pptx

Agenda

• Publicity
• Slack channel update
• Blockers
• Cluster infrastructure progress
• Whats in 0.30.0
• Whats planned in 0.31.0
• How might we get a 3270 resource accessible from the IBM cloud to test our 3270 functionality against
• When can we deprecate and retire eclipse plugins for Galasa. Under what conditions could we do that ?

Attendees

Minutes

Publicity

• GSE conference in 2 weeks
• Share submissions have gone
• GSE Nordics have 'come up' - live demo of creating tests from scratch needs adding.
  • @hobbit1983 is investigating further.
• Publicity of the new galasa properties get functionality (new in 0.30.0).
  • Video introducing CPS

Whats in the 0.30.0 release

Look in the KanBan board, there is a column "Done in this release". https://github.com/orgs/galasa-dev/projects/3/views/1

Release notes will be published on galasa.dev website, but summary:

• CLuster move
• Release of 0.30.0
• galasactl properties get/set/delete commands.

OMP-owned cloud account

• PII questionaire
• @louisa-seers chasing up with John Mertec.

Access to 3270 resource outside of the IBM firewall ?

• OMP may have access to a mainframe.
• First step @louisa-seers to talk to John Mertec to see if we can have any access.

Question about should we deprecate/retire/remove eclipse plugins ?

• Lots of discussion on about this in the meeting (see transcript). eg: Reasons why we want to do this.
• What conditions which need to be met before we can think about this:
  • CLI to be able to pull 3270 images into files from tests run on ecosysyems
  • CLI ability to kill a running test
  • CLI ability to create an OBR project for projects which don't have one
• Add this to the agenda to the next TSC meeting