adds new section for dev/rel cycle structure & diagram

book/_toc.yml

@@ -88,6 +88,7 @@ parts:
         - file: framework/references/intro
           sections:
             - file: framework/references/archive-versions
+            - file: framework/references/dev-cycle-structure
 
   - caption: "Documentation 📚"
     chapters:

book/framework/references/dev-cycle-structure.md

@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+# QIIME 2 Development and Release Cycle Structure
+
+In the sections below, we will go through the development cycle structure and release process for QIIME 2.
+The aim is to provide insight into our structure for other research software engineering teams that may want to utilize any/all of these processes, as well as to assist our community developers in knowing what timeline/deadlines they should be aware of within each development/release cycle.
+If you have any questions on this process, please don't hesitate to reach out on our user forum under the [Developer Discussion](https://forum.qiime2.org/c/dev-discussion) category!
+
+## QIIME 2 Release Cycle Structure
+
+As of 2024.10, QIIME 2 Distributions are released bi-anually, on the first Wednesday of April and October.
+This schedule provides us with ample development time between releases, and provides our developer community with at least a three month notice for any external dependency changes (i.e. bumping Python, removing a deprecated package, etc).
+
+The following diagram outlines relevant timepoints between each release, with terms defined below.
+
+```{image} ../../_static/q2-dev-cycle-diagram.png
+:align: center
+:width: 400
+```