🚀 Welcome to Milestone 18.11!

Apologies for the delay here but we're excited to kick off another impactful milestone! This period marks a critical turning point as we close out the self-managed database rollout (groupcontainer registry top priority), continue advancing our virtual registry capabilities, and build valuable AI development skills that will serve us well as we transition to Artifact Registry implementation.

The current plan stands as follows: 32 Deliverables (34 points), 12 Stretch (14 points), and 59 issues needing refinement across both groups. However, we're carrying significantly more scope than we can realistically deliver based on our recent velocity and capacity constraints.

Before we dive in, we need your help:

1. Descope aggressively - We have 103 total issues, which is unsustainable. Please review issues assigned to you or that you plan to work on in %18.11. If an issue doesn't directly support our top priorities, consider moving it to the backlog. We need to reduce our scope significantly to ensure we can deliver on what matters most.
2. Prioritize ruthlessly - Focus on:
   • Closing the self-managed database rollout
   • Experimenting with AI-led development on straightforward features
   • Addressing critical vulnerabilities and high-priority bugs
   • Advancing Docker, Maven, and npm virtual registries
   • Everything else is secondary
3. ❗ ❗ Review refinement issues ❗ ❗ - We have 59 issues in workflowrefinement. These have grown way past what's practical to do. Please go through issues you've opened, consider descoping first. If they are critical, ensure they have weights and ready for development.
4. Assess your workload - Consider: Effort ÷ Capacity == 😊 or 😰? Let us know early if you have capacity concerns or blockers.

Please review and update your PTO, capacity concerns, or descoping suggestions this week so we can finalize a realistic plan!

🎯 Let's make %18.11 the milestone where we close the self-managed rollout and build momentum on AR! 🎯

cc: @crystalpoole @trizzi @bonnie-tsang @10io @dmeshcharakou @fmccawley @hswimelar @jdrpereira @adie.po @mkhalifa3 @vespian_gl @radbatnag @rchanila @suleimiahmed @sylviashen @cwoolley-gitlab