Process
The ArchivesSpace development process is informed by the concept Agile software development. The ArchivesSpace codebase is continuously updated with new features and fixes for bugs reported by the user community. New releases appear often (typically once each quarter during a year), though it is not expected that system administrators will update their installation each time a release appears. At least four times a year the ArchivesSpace team will publicize a release and recommend that users upgrade to it.
The process is intended to be driven by use cases, feature requests, and bug reports contributed by ArchivesSpace users and processed into ticketed items in our issue tracking system. At the beginning of each fortnightly "sprint" high priority issues are reviewed and distributed to the development team. At the end of the sprint the development team submits a "build" containing all the work the team (and outside code contributors) were able to do during the sprint. The build is then passed to the community for acceptance testing. Acceptance testers use the build in concert with the issue tracking system to work through all issues marked "delivered" and change their status to either "accepted" or "rejected". Rejected issues will be fed back into the sprint / build / test cycle.