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Clearly declare a milestone release mgr at beginning of the milestone.
Post to the devlist the target delivery schedule of the milestone. Get consensus from the community early.
Nail the must-have function from the community that is required to be delivered in this milestone.
Target (or reTarget) all of the Jira defects and new function that is required for the milestone. Move non-critical items to the next milestone early.

Keep Jiras under control during the milestone. Make sure new opened ones are targeted for the appropriate milestone, and the backlog is decreasing.
Make sure the new function Jira are marked appropriately (since they will be used in the ReadMe file creation).
Look for Jira's that have patches attached to them and get the code integrated early in the cycle. Don't wait until the last minute.
Make sure that you begin to obtain clean versions for all SNAPSHOTs in the build. This can sometimes be a lengthy process as dependent packages are sometimes not available.
Double check that the TCK machines are ready for executing the TCK. Lay out a plan for the distributed execution of the suite.
Now is the time to ensure that all of the licenses are valid and replacements/remediation should be done.
Declare a candidate build to the community.
Make sure that you remind the community that all modules should have the appropriate header file with the appropriate copyright statement. http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html#headers

Declare a candidate build for the TCK testing to the community and work any issues that are voiced.
Update the Readme file with the important New Function and Total defects. Put the delivery date of the milestone in the top of the readme.
Ensure that tooling is verified with the specific milestone candidate build (late changes can break tooling, don't ignore this step).
Double check to make sure that the Graphical Installer works with the build candidate.
Get some to verify that all of the samples pass without issues.
Complete TCK testing for the build (this normally can take 2-3 weeks).
Near the end of the TCK testing, create a new branch in the build tree for the milestone. Remind the community that only milestone defects should be integrated to that branch.
Declare the TCK testing has been completed, and request for a vote from the community to make this build public. Allow at least 3 days for the vote to complete.
After 3 days, summarize the vote and declare the milestone build as the public milestone build.
Make approved build available in source and binary form. Declare this to the community with excitement .
Create Service Branch for the milestone or release (if appropriate).
Post a congratulation note to the devlist thanking the entire team, and calling out any extraordinary efforts that were done to make it happen.