From: Martin Stone Davis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: Discussion of development issues <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [freenet-dev] Re: Project Manager Needed? Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 00:00:22 -0700
digital ch wrote:
Just an observation but it really seems like freenet needs a project manager.(I know... I know... along with more full time developers, servers, testers, etc)
For instance the issues that just popped up with the new unstable. I was one of those people who spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how I broke my node. All that was needed was a post to the newsgroups and a new message on the homepage and it would have been fine. But there was a serious lack of communication.
Considering that you are intentionally using an unstable version, I don't think that a couple of hours of confusion is a serious problem. Furthermore, you could have reduced the confusion to zero if you had been reading the CVS list (which is a pretty good idea since you're using unstable).
You can't have it both ways. The developers want a large group of people to test with. That means those of us who want to support the project may opt for reduced functionality. That doesn't mean we should be completely surprised by changes. I don't care if you make changes that break the app, what I care is when you intentionally make drastic changes and don't warn the user ahead of time.
I'm in development, and I have users that verify my product in a QA environment. If I make changes that I know will seriously change the environement without warning them first I catch a world of crap. Why? Because I wasted their time while they tried to figure out what was going on, emailing, bug tracking, etc. The key point here is that they have to be notified in advance so they can plan accordingly. I think many of the complaints started today originate from that. The users would have preferred to know what was going on so they didn't upgrade if they didn't want to take the risk.
A project manager could take care of those little things like communication, as well as the general tasks like ensuring people document stuff, trying to organize teams, evangalize, prioritize work, poll users, etc.
Give it a thought, I think it would do a world of good for this project.
Hmmm. Maybe... But are the developers so bad at prioritizing? So bad at documenting? Are they bad at all? I kinda doubt any of that has reached such a crisis that they need to be told what to do. As for the rest, I dunno. In any case, I doubt that there's money for an extra hire.
Developers suck at prioritizing and documentation both. I know I was a developer, now I have lots of them working under me. Want proof? Show me where there is one really good developer grade piece of documentation on freenet? You can't cause it doesn't exist. The reason more developers don't work on this project is because it is obscenely complicated and there is no really good documentation that tells you the architctecture so that you can figure out what you should do to start working on a particular piece. Would it really be so hard to put together a document that says here are what the major classes are, here is what they are doing, here is where we need work? If you believe people really want to read through the source to figure out whats going on your wrong. I want to know exactly where to focus my attention. Then once I jump in at the appropriate spot I will dig into the source and go to work. I don't want to read 500 pages worth of source to figure out the spot I should start work.
I say this realizing that we have other priorities. (Getting freenet to work for instance) But it's one of those wierd economic issues. Maybe if we did a better job with the little things we would end up with more resources and we could bang out the bigger things quicker...
Toad, and all the other devs don't feel I'm trashing you. Anyone who works that hard on a project where people are always complaining and making suggestions(self included) gets my admiriation. I'm sure it has to be infinitely frustating.
-Martin
P.S. But maybe I have a bias against project managers. For 6 years, I've worked for a boss who is not only a non-programmer but the stupidest, most micro-managing, and most controlling b*tch in the world.
I've experienced that to. It sucks I agree. If you ever work under a real PM/Architect and it will change how you view these things dramatically.
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