For the past several sprints, we've had this series of steps / important dates at the end of the sprint: 
  1. Target Platform Freeze Day: last Wed of sprint
  2. Code Freeze / Branch Day: last Thurs of sprint (sometimes slips to Friday, as it did last week)
  3. Build runs over night:  last Thurs of sprint (sometimes slips to Friday, as it did last week)
  4. Stage build for QE: last Fri of sprint (sometimes slips to Sat/Sun, as it did last week)
  5. QE review period: last Mon-Tues of sprint
  6. Release Day: first Wed of next sprint (sometimes takes an additional day)
  7. Announcement Day: 6 days after GA Release on the following Tuesday
On today's Cabal call, it was decided that we could instead shift the process back by one day:
  1. Target Platform Freeze Day: second-last Tues of sprint: Mar 7 at midnight EST
  2. Code Freeze / Branch Day: last Wed of sprint (could slip to Thurs for blocker): Mar 8 at 23:59 EST
  3. Build runs over night:  last Thurs of sprint (could slip to Thurs for blocker): Mar 9 starting around 00:00 EST
  4. Stage build for QE: last Thurs of sprint (could slip to Friday instead of weekend): Mar 9
  5. QE review period: last Fri & Mon of sprint: Mar 10 & Mar 13 (CET) [QE approval announcement is usually EOD Brno time]
  6. Release Day: last Tues of sprint: Mar 14
  7. Announcement Day: 7 days after GA Release on the following Tuesday (could be sooner, too)
(Dates above are for the current Daffodil sprint 128. Add 21 days to each one for subsequent sprint dates.)

By moving everything a day earlier in the sprint, we:
We'll try this approach for the next sprint or two and can review if it's an improvement during a sprint retrospective in the future.

Thanks,

--
Nick Boldt :: JBoss by Red Hat
Productization Lead :: JBoss Tools & Dev Studio
http://nick.divbyzero.com