One Night @ Web Access

It was 6th August 2008, CiviCRM team was getting ready for first alpha release of version 2.1. You could feel the tension and sense the responsibility on everyone's face. Although it was an alpha release, each one wanted to close their outstanding issues / bugs. We were trying to get Open Issues count below 10 and wanted to close as much QA issues as possible.

Deepak was busy fixing upgrade issues. That's one of the most complex things we need to provide users so that they don't lose any of their existing data. This responsibility was with Deepak and his upgrade team. Our Joomla czar, Amit was helping Deepak with Joomla related upgrade issues and fixing/adding documentation for v2.0 to v2.1 upgrade procedure. Meanwhile Sunil and Shailesh were testing / fixing Drupal related upgrade issues. It was around 1.00pm (IST), I decided to have Team Meeting in Conference Room. I did quick status check with everyone and ensured everyone was on right track. We also discussed few doubts/issues with team and decided to release alpha around 7.00pm (IST).

Yashodha was our in-charge for v2.1 QA re-distribution task. Since I was working on some fixes, my QA issues were delegated to others :). I must admit QA is not one of my favorite things. At around 3.00pm (IST), as usual Kiran came to me with some weird bug fix and wanted me to review his code. Kiran quickly implemented changes that we discussed and moved on to issue QA. I sometimes wonder how people are able to think about so many permutations and combinations while doing QA. I seriously admire a few of my team members for this. Especially Sunil and Shailesh, who always find somethings that amaze me and make me think a lot more before closing any issue. I guess everyone in team is developing a good habit of questioning before implementing any issue. I think in the long run this benefits both individual and quality of software.

At 6.30pm (IST), we were still not ready for release. Pankaj found yet another weird bug in CiviMail during QA process. He brilliantly fixed it quickly and moved to QA next issue. Junia was fixing wysiwyg editor issues and she also fixed few layout related problems. Just when we thought we were ready for alpha we found few more issues.

I simply don't have any clue, why we find bugs in the end, just before the release. So while Shailesh and Yashodha were fixing bugs with CiviEvent, Kiran managed to close another CiviPledge related issue. Sunil and Deepak fixed few issues related to upgrade. Amit was having bad headache, so he had tied his handkerchief on this head like a bandit :) and was fighting bravely with Joomla issues.

So finally at around 9.45pm (IST), after everyone's nod, Yashodha pulled the trigger and released CiviCRM v2.1. Job was not yet done. We quickly downloaded both Drupal and Joomla tarballs from sourceforge.net and started testing it. Everything seemed to be ok and after green signal from entire testing team, Yashodha announced to the world about CiviCRM v2.1 alpha1 release.

I sincerely thank my team for their effort, dedication, hardwork and teamwork that everyone showed during v2.1.

Personally I think v2.1 release is the most feature-filled release we ever did.
Great job everyone!!!
3 cheers to everyone ...

Hip Hip.. Hurray!!!
Hip Hip.. Hurray!!!
Hip Hip.. Hurray!!!