I forgot to add...

These suggestion descriptions are very desktop centric. We would of course have the appropriate stuff on the Cosmo side as well in addition to sub-deliverables for integration etc.

Sheila

On Feb 28, 2007, at 4:53 PM, Sheila Mooney wrote:

Philippe, I agree 100% that tracking the milestones is an excellent way to measure our progress, so +1. More information is better to help mitigate the risks and I was going to suggest we enhance the proposal with some of the following information as well.

My impression from the discussions was that the end goal was a bit fuzzy. I was going to suggest we be a bit more concrete about what the actual finish line is so when people see where we are currently, it's clear where we are going and why we can or cannot make the decision to defer or cut certain features/bugs. For example, the exit criteria such as "accommodating design changes or feature rework" is a bit vague and it doesn't really give people the comfort that we won't spiral with changes uncontrollably or have a huge bug queue for weeks and weeks - resulting in a release date getting pushed out.

-> We could also track some sub-milestone criteria such as the following....

+ What features have we done?
+ What features are left to do?
+ What workflows are complete?
+ What workflows are incomplete?
+ What's been tested?
+ What hasn't been tested?
+ What non-code deliverables are complete?
+ What non-code deliverables are incomplete?

Tracking workflows helps me as well since this makes it easier to punt stuff. We could decide to defer a complete workflow which entails punting a group of bugs across multiple features.

-> The other thing I heard is that we could also agree on our ultimate end-user goals and set those expectations properly. Do we want real users or just people trying out the app to give us feedback? A proposal...

Dogfood Goals:
Get people outside of OSAF to dogfood Chandler the way Mitch, Sheila, Priss and Mimi have been dogfooding:
+ Using Sharing
+ Using the Dashboard
+ Using the Calendar
+ Using Edit/Update

-> Also, giving people some visibility into how we are going to prioritize/punt bugs is also worthwhile so that they know what categories the P1s and P2s fit into and they understand we aren't gold-plating but fixing very core problems. Then we can make decisions like "punt all bugs in the convenience category" or say that anything which doesn't make it into those buckets gets deferred automatically. (We may need an additional bucket for developer/build/qa related stuff - this is just an example).

Buckets for prioritizing features and bugs:
+ Playing around with the app, trying out the features
+ Stuff that blocks day to day usage
+ Stuff that confuses people
+ Stuff that makes it more likely for people to stick with Chandler (conveniences)

Sheila

On Feb 28, 2007, at 2:26 PM, Philippe Bossut wrote:

Hi,

About...

Sheila Mooney wrote:
+ There is some anxiety around the uncertain release date. Some are not comfortable with a release date that is constantly slipping or not being able to rally and plan/pace around a fixed solid date. They would like to pick a fixed date and cut in order to make it.

...the only way I know of handling risks is to mitigate them with some level of process, i.e. predetermine check lists used to assess the health and progress of the project. In that particular instance (schedule uncertainty) there's no substitute to pacing ourselves through a set of identified milestones and check if we pass them or not.

I wrote such a list of fine granularity milestones and associated criteria some weeks ago: http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007- February/007658.html

I didn't receive any comment on it meaning that either everyone agreed or, more than likely, the objective of such process was unclear.

So, here we go: the objective of this process is to mitigate the risk of an uncontrollably slipping schedule: identify were we are in the schedule, how we are doing and how far we are from the final objective.

Of course, this is of little use if there's no buy in from the interested parties, so I think I'm asking the question again: comments on the proposed process?

Cheers,
- Philippe
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