Release Manager process proposal

[robbavey]

Proposals for improving the release manager process:

Release Manager Rotation

• Rotating Release Manager(s) for each release of Logstash
• Primary and assistant Release Manager - primary drives the release, follows the appropriate issue in dev (eg https://github.com/elastic/dev/issues/842), acting as point person for the release, following the steps on the release guide
• Assistant release is reviewer of code and CMS changes, and as a reminder if steps are not being followed, and also follows the dev issue
• On release day, assistant pushes the 'Publish' button
• The acting RM for each release should be clearly stated somewhere public - slack channel, for example

Meta issue for release steps for each release

• Create a checkpoint list of tasks, based on the release guide. All checkboxes must be completed before the release is completed, and RM can be handed off to the Assistant.

I'd be happy to start this off either as Primary or assistant

[andrewvc]

I love this proposal. We also need a release manager to assign release managers to specific releases (turtles all the way down).

I propose we create a spreadsheet and assign release managers to future releases in there.

We should add a task to the end of each release for assigning the next release managers to the next unreleased version.

We also need to formalize who is a release manager. IMHO It'd be good to start adding more people to the process, though I'm unsure if there is a point to the entirety of LS doing this task. I propose that we create a pool of 5 RMs including myself.