Last September, a small but nasty bug was added to the WordPress Core code base and remained undetected until 6.4 was released in November.

Once the severity was clear, Core contributors worked around the clock to determine the appropriate fix, getting a new release out to the world in less than 8 hours from start to finish. Let’s examine what happened during this moment in the project’s history before zooming out in a case study of release management. Lessons the project learned will be shared in a way that you can relate to, allowing you to use them in your own work.

This is a joint talk by Aaron Jorbin and Jonathan Desrosiers, two contributors with over a combined 26 years in contribution experience. They have each led multiple minor and major WordPress releases, are both core committers and members of the WordPress Security team.