Proposal to change release feature planning

20250412-P-feature-planning.md

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+# Improving the Dapr Feature Planning
+
+* Author(s): Whit Waldo (@whitwaldo)
+* State: Proposed
+* Date: 4/12/2025
+
+## Overview
+This proposal aims to formalize a new approach to planning releases, enhancing feature eligibility criteria, and
+bringing transparency, clarity and definitiveness to the current process.
+
+### Current Process
+After releasing a new Dapr version, maintainers and contributors meet weekly to discuss high-level goals for the
+next release. We review what happened in the previous release interval, identify improvement opportunities (process,
+tooling, new capabilities) and draft proposals reflecting these discussions over the following weeks.
+
+These proposals are debated and iterated upon until consensus is reached. Developers and assigned tasks,
+POCs are built, tests are added, documentation is produced, SDKs are updated, and features may be highlighted in a
+community call before being released.
+
+### Shortcomings
+The current process has several shortcomings:
+- **Pending Proposals:** Many proposals in dapr/proposals have been iterated on for months or years by numerous 
+contributors but remain inactive due to lack of advocacy. Despite broad community interest across a long period, these
+proposals are often overlooked.
+- **New Proposals:** In contrast, new proposals benefit from only a week of feedback from a limited number
+of contributors. This rushed process often results in features that may not align with larger project goals or
+provide lasting positive impact.
+- **Artificial Urgency:** Setting tentative release dates upfront and selecting priorities before designing them creates
+unnecessary urgency. This rush to consensus risks half-baked ideas being implemented and potentially impact
+credibility around release timelines as issues that might have been caught during the design process are identified
+and iterated on on-the-fly in a rush to get the feature completed.
+
+The current release cycle structure is ineffective as it forces us to race potentially incomplete ideas out the door.
+
+## Proposal
+I would like to propose several changes to our release process starting immediately.
+
+### Develop Proposals Between Releases
+We launched v1.15 on February 26th. Each of the current goals of this release span proposals introduced largely around
+and since then:
+
+| Proposal | Introduced At                                     | Proposed By |
+| -- |---------------------------------------------------| -- |
+|Actors: Bi-directional streaming | February 17                                       | Josh van Leeuwen |
+| Actors: PubSub | February 26, alternative proposal raised March 25 | Josh van Leeuwen, alternative by Whit Waldo |
+| Multi-App Workflows | March 24                                          | Josh van Leeuwen |
+| Event Streaming | March 24                                          | Cassie Coyle |
+| Workflow Re-runs | March 25, alternative proposal raised April 6     | Whit Waldo, alternative by Josh van Leeuwen |
+
+Despite being raised no more than a couple of weeks ago, many of these proposals have already gained significant traction. 
+However, implementing well-designed flagship features based on a three-week ideation and design timeline is unrealistic
+and isn't the process taken with larger software groups. It shouldn't be done here either. Furthermost, most of these
+issues have minimal community presence outside of the most-active contributors themselves.
+
+#### Proposed Changes
+Now is the time for brainstorming big-picture ideas when contributors take breaks from coding or casual discussions
+spark new inspiration.
+
+Discord frequently features requests for smaller features that could collectively form larger improvements both in terms
+of quality of life and feature additions. Even if these authors don't write original proposals themselves, we should document
+these ideas (in a place the stalebot won't hide them) and solicit community feedback to gauge traction. Regular community
+and meteor calls should highlight these new ideas with balanced commentary from hosts and direct viewers to relevant
+issues so they can chime in themselves.
+
+Designing large-scale features without time pressure soliciting feedback from less-invested contributors can help ensure
+that new capabilities are well-thought-out and either fit into our larger vision or require further refinement.
+
+### Release Prioritization
+Currently, we ideate high-level goals on maintainer and design calls following a release and wait for proposals to be
+submitted, and then largely just move forward with them.
+
+#### Proposed Changes
+I propose a substantial change to our process. Barring hotfixes for intermediate patch releases, only ideas backed by an
+existing proposal (at least two months old) should be considered for a new release.
+
+We aim for four major releases a year, though we're more on track for three (one release every four months). By
+requiring proposals to exist for at least two months, they will have been considered for at least half of the previous 
+release cycle, especially during the final stages of the release when unexpected issues tend to crop up while trying
+to get the release completed.
+
+This longer proposal period means release prioritization meetings can focus on highlighting eligible proposals and 
+providing a call-to-action for final comments and votes on the PRs. If there are too many accepted proposals, 
+prioritization can narrowed to those proposals where contributors wish to be assigned and developers can 
+immediately move forward with the implementation instead of only then thinking about the design.
+
+## Conclusion
+The proposed changes to the Dapr feature planning process aim to spend more time considering and reasoning about new 
+features in advance of committing to new releases instead of during. This will also maintainers and contributors to
+focus on building out concepts that have already spent being vetted and refined, reducing the risk of rushed, incomplete
+implementations that may deviate substantially from the original concept at release.