On Nov 6, 2012, at 17:03 , Noah Slater <[email protected]> wrote: > 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?
My intention with this thread is to try to create a “culture of ship”. (I’ll be sending out t-shirts, when we succeed). I don’t think making this a more formal thing isn’t going to do much. I think the weekly status meetings are great way to formally keep track of the progress we make through our collective roadmap (which we also need to work on a little bit more structured, but one thing at a time. Let’s ship 1.3.0. Jan -- > > > 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
