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Planning

The release schedule for AIPS++in the current operational phase is two releases per year, nominally scheduled for the months of April and October. This schedule establishes a natural development cycle lasting approximately six months. The planning activities during each development cycle proceed by the following stages, starting two weeks before the date the master distribution for the preceding release is finalized:

1.

Each person formally responsible for a module or area of development in the system is asked to prepare a preliminary planning document describing the module priorities, current status and proposed development items for the coming development cycle, but without making any target assignments. A list of deferred or postponed development items from previous cycles is maintained within the project documentation system for reference, but the planning is zero-based, i.e. planning for each cycle is considered afresh with new items competing for scheduling with deferred or carry-over development items on the basis of their merit alone at the time of each planning cycle. This prevents planning inertia, and allows the project to be responsive to evolving user needs and external advice; however, it does retain continuity.

2.

The collected planning proposals are circulated internally for general comment, and to allow other development items to be motivated from within the consortium.

3.

After this period of comment, the development plan is finalized in discussions between the project management and the site managers, with final arbitration by the project management, whose job it is in this context to ensure that overall project goals and user requirements are met and external advice is heeded. Target descriptions and assignments will then be established from the agreed development items.

4.

The plan becomes final when each site manager, after consultation with the site Director as required, accepts the agreed targets for their site. Each target constitutes a work package, and includes a full description of the task, a time estimate, any other targets on which it depends, an assigned developer and completion criteria.

5.

All deferred or postponed items are added to the documented list of items carried forward to the next development cycle, to be reconsidered at the start of the next planning cycle. A basic priority (short-, medium- or long-term) will be assigned to all deferred items, but are not binding due to the zero-based planning.

6.

The targets for the current cycle are entered in the target tracking system, which records weekly progress reports from all developers with assigned targets. These weekly e-mail reports are an important communication mechanism within the project.

7.

Progress on the plan is monitored and reported by the project management. Mid-course planning revisions are discouraged, unless a major planning deficiency is uncovered in implementation. This is to ensure that the project maintains a focus on delivering the agreed targets at the end of the development cycle. Items can be submitted at any time for consideration in the next planning cycle, and are added to the recorded list of possible future development items.