Product Process

Working with Issues:

Issues should be named (or re-named) to reflect the top level feature or bug they tackle. A github issue is the primary place to store information about the context, and current thoughts regarding a feature or bug. All conversation regarding issues should happen in the issue or referenced wiki pages.

Sensitive issues that should not be discussed in public (read: security issues) should be discussed via email or slack with the maintainers.

General questions and conversation about Metabase should take place on the user forums at (http://discourse.metabase.com/) so that Github Issues can be focused on product development tasks.

Bugs

Bugs are verified product defects where the actual behavior of the product is not in line with the intended behavior. When new issues are reported the Metabase engineering team will evaluate them and determine if the issue is a Bug or if it deserves a separate classification.

In most cases once a bug is verified it will be assigned to be fixed in the next standard release of Metabase. However, sometimes the Metabase team will decide that a bug is critical and must be fixed immediately instead of waiting for the next standard release, these releases are called Hotfix or Patch releases.

Features / Enhancements

A Feature is a new capability of the product which never existed previously. An Enhancement is an upgrade to an existing part of the product to increase it's capabilities.

Features and enhancements will require a dedicated design (product, interaction, visual and/or technical) depending on the complexity of the feature and it's impact on other portions of the application. All conversation regarding the feature should occur in the issue.

In the case of both features and enhancements they represent blocks of work that have been scoped and designed to a large enough degree that they are ready to be assigned to a release and worked on. In specific, they are not proposals (discussed below).

Proposals

Proposals are any idea about an addition to the product. They have not been scoped or defined in detail yet nor have they gone through any form of rigorous design. All conversations about proposals should take place on the issue.

It is expected that as a proposal is discussed and analyzed that eventually enough is defined that it becomes a clear feature or enhancement.

Milestone Principles:

All work on Metabase is done in a best effort basis and no guarantees are made. The presence of an issue in a milestone is an intention to work on the feature/bug not a promise to complete it in that time frame.

The Metabase team currently aims to have something to release on roughly a monthly basis, but that is subject to change.