Hey Everyone!
This will be my first forum post in quite a while. I've taken more of a behind-the-scenes roll on the Network over the past two years and focused on managing the staff team. I guess its time to dust off my forum count.
Recently, there have been a few posts regarding development here on ManaCube, and I'd like to address some points and concerns raised by the community publicly.
I want to let you know that the Admins are always working to improve the Network. Please believe me when I tell you that we also wish for a bug-free Network just like you. The Admins can only fix so much by themselves. If something is a plugin configuration issue, we can generally resolve it ourselves, which is why certain smaller, less important things get fixed before larger issues.
Large issues require developers to change the plugin code to fix the bug, and then it requires a lot of testing. Smaller bugs are resolved much quicker by Admins who are only working on one Network.
With the other networks under ManaLabs, the development team have been stretched thin. At times bugs have been reported and then were either forgotten or overlooked by our developers. We've brought on Cullan and are hiring an additional developer to help alleviate these issues.
In addition to this, I've also recently brought in a new agile scrum development cycle whereby we Admins plan out all the bugs that need resolved that week and assign them to our developers. The issues/bugs will be moved across the board until completion to track progress easily. This will repeat in 'sprints' every week. As you're all aware, we have a large backlog of issues across the Network, so it will take some time to get through them all. We are actively working to make the bug fixing process more efficient and effective.
The hope is to get to a point where we can give each server a semi-dedicated week for fixes/improvements so that no single server gets favoured over another and all see their fair amount of love and support.
Lastly, over Christmas, we also started prioritising the QA Team and have selected the staff members who will be leading the team for each server. Members have been selected and will get notified/added in due course. We are currently setting up QA test servers so that the QA team can test new features and plugins before any new code gets implemented to the live servers. I will be making a separate post regarding the QA Team when everything is ready.
With the change made to our processes, additional development power and the new QA team things will get much smoother at a quick pace here on ManaCube.
Thanks for reading and your continued support,
Dylan
This will be my first forum post in quite a while. I've taken more of a behind-the-scenes roll on the Network over the past two years and focused on managing the staff team. I guess its time to dust off my forum count.
Recently, there have been a few posts regarding development here on ManaCube, and I'd like to address some points and concerns raised by the community publicly.
I want to let you know that the Admins are always working to improve the Network. Please believe me when I tell you that we also wish for a bug-free Network just like you. The Admins can only fix so much by themselves. If something is a plugin configuration issue, we can generally resolve it ourselves, which is why certain smaller, less important things get fixed before larger issues.
Large issues require developers to change the plugin code to fix the bug, and then it requires a lot of testing. Smaller bugs are resolved much quicker by Admins who are only working on one Network.
With the other networks under ManaLabs, the development team have been stretched thin. At times bugs have been reported and then were either forgotten or overlooked by our developers. We've brought on Cullan and are hiring an additional developer to help alleviate these issues.
In addition to this, I've also recently brought in a new agile scrum development cycle whereby we Admins plan out all the bugs that need resolved that week and assign them to our developers. The issues/bugs will be moved across the board until completion to track progress easily. This will repeat in 'sprints' every week. As you're all aware, we have a large backlog of issues across the Network, so it will take some time to get through them all. We are actively working to make the bug fixing process more efficient and effective.
The hope is to get to a point where we can give each server a semi-dedicated week for fixes/improvements so that no single server gets favoured over another and all see their fair amount of love and support.
Lastly, over Christmas, we also started prioritising the QA Team and have selected the staff members who will be leading the team for each server. Members have been selected and will get notified/added in due course. We are currently setting up QA test servers so that the QA team can test new features and plugins before any new code gets implemented to the live servers. I will be making a separate post regarding the QA Team when everything is ready.
With the change made to our processes, additional development power and the new QA team things will get much smoother at a quick pace here on ManaCube.
Thanks for reading and your continued support,
Dylan