I think this is a great initiative Jan. I am sure there are a few people right now who are thinking "Hey, but I am working on X, and Jan didn't mention X, so is X important? Or is Jan telling me I shouldn't be working on X?" Well, I understand that. As it happens, I am working on the docs, and Jan didn't mention them.
But I don't think the idea is that anything not on the list is unimportant, or that if you're working on something else, then you should stop. Just that we need to have a regularly updated list of our current PROJECT LEVEL focus. And so, with that caveat out of the way... Jan, as this is your initiative, can I ask you to start a page on the wiki? We should document this. I think the wiki page should probably have three things on it. A list of our current focus areas. An archived list of previous focus areas. And a list of areas to focus on in the future. I think we should also review this monthly. Each month, review the current focus areas, see what has been done and what has not. Archive the list. Create a new one for the current month. And decide on whether we want to add any other items. This should be a dev-level decision making process, perhaps in the first IRC meeting of the month. A monthly email to both user and dev, along with general project status, might be a good thing to come out of this too. Thoughts? On 6 November 2012 15:47, Jan Lehnardt <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey all, > > I’m trying something new here. Please send any feedback you might have. > > DISCLAIMER: I won’t keep anyone working on or discussing anything. All I > want is find a way to make us all more productive. > > * * * > > > With that out of the way: > > > Let’s Focus! > > > My hypothesis is this: > > This group, dev@, has a limited amount of time and attention to move > CouchDB forward. We have so many important things to do that it is very > hard for us to say “no” to any one thing that is brought up. Historically, > whenever there is a surge of activity, we (myself definitely included) tend > to bring up more issues than we can work on at a time and as a result we > end up doing less than we could. > > > My proposal to solve this: > > Say “no”. > > More specifically, we need to learn to say “no” to things that, while they > are definitely important, are not important enough “right now” and should > be deferred to a later time. > > For example, currently I think our most important topics are: > > - Get CORS and docs into shape that we can merge them to master/1.3.x > - Ship 1.3.0 > - Help the Futon.Next folks out as much as we can to build & deliver > Futon.Next. > > At the same time, there are many more discussions going on that are > distracting us from the points above done. > (This includes my Plugins Proposal, I am clearly guilty of this.) > > Note that the list above is a strong “in my opinion”, your shortlist is > likely to differ and that’s great. We as a group need to figure out > together what the things are that we care about *and* that we can care > about at any one time. > > This includes things we discuss on dev@, in the weekly meetings, patches > we request reviews & comments on. > > I strongly believe that when we can agree on a short list of things we > care about, and get them done, and *then* move on to the next few things, > we’ll get more accomplished than we do right now. > > * * * > > It would be illusionary to imagine a fully sequential workflow, so I won’t > pretend we should try to achieve that, we’ll always have things going on at > the same time, some by different group members, some by the same people. I > also don’t suggest to add a layer of classical project management. Some > discussions are broader (BigCouch merge, source reorg) and need more time, > others should be resolved quickly. And to reiterate the disclaimer, I won’t > keep anyone from working on or discussing anything at any time. > > All I suggest is that we, as a group, are a little more mindful about the > things we can handle at any one point. This will change depending on how > much time each of us can spend in a given week or month. I hope over time > the list of things we can do at a time grows, as we add more members to the > dev team (hello Futon.Next folks! :) > > * * * > > In practical terms, I’ll be asking the questions “is this relevant right > now?” and “should this be on our short list of things to care about?” a lot > more often, and I hope, given you agree with the broad strokes above, can > do the same. > > Thanks for your time and attention! > > Cheers > Jan > -- > > > > > > > -- NS
