Hi PSC, I took liberty in participating in Steven Feldman's Questionnaire re "Product Management processes in OSGeo projects" which is a planned talk in FOSS4G 2019 Bucharest.
See for the answers below. Since Steven plans a followup call with me in the next day(s), please let me know your comments. I am happy to adjust, extend or whatever needs to be done. thanks, Markus ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Google Forms <[email protected]> Date: Sun, Jun 2, 2019 at 11:40 PM Subject: Product management processes in OSGeo projects To: <[email protected]> [image: Google Forms] Thanks for filling in Product management processes in OSGeo projects <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSepJf73WAxem6lxBCY0grv4KGln3M0frmIW0fgoM-injyn8YA/viewform?usp=mail_form_link> Here's what we've received from you: Product management processes in OSGeo projects Thank you for agreeing to help me in researching product management processes in OSGeo projects. My aim is to try and establish: • Does the Open Source collaborative development model incorporate and support product management disciplines? • Are there formal product management strategies within the OSGeo Community? • How is a roadmap developed? • Is the roadmap inspired by a cohesive vision or is it driven by the willingness of larger users to fund features? • How do projects get to hear the voice of the user? • Do software development methodologies impact product management? • Are there best practices that we can learn from and share? Following on from this survey I plan to contact some (most) of the respondents and if you are available conduct a short interview with you via a call or by email. It would be great if you could complete this survey by 3rd June 2019. I hope to present the results of this research at FOSS4G at the end of the summer, I will also write up the results and share with our community and others. Subject to timing I will make an early version of my presentation/write up available to respondents for comment before publication. Thanks once again for your help May the FOSS be with you Steven Email address * [email protected] A bit about you and your project If you think someone else on your project steering team should be completing this survey as well as or instead of you please forward the survey to them Your name * Markus Neteler Project * GRASS GIS What is your role in the project team? Steering Committee Chair or Member, Contributor, Other? Steering Committee Chair How long have you been active within the project team? 25+ years Are you willing to participate in a short interview - Yes - No - Maybe Best way to contact you for an interview - Google Hangouts - Skype - WhatsApp call - email - Other: Product management processes I have set out a series of questions below that will help me to understand how your project sets goals, converts them to a roadmap and then prioritises features. It will make collating your response easier if you can respond to these questions but if you find that too tedious or if your responses don't fit with the structure of my questions then I have given you the option of including a long form text answer at the end of the questionnaire. Vision and Goals Has your project set out a vision and a set of goals that drive the roadmap? Does your project have a clear statement of vision or purpose? Why are you and others committing time to this project? What do you hope to achieve? - Yes - No - Sort of Does your project have a set of goals or targets that you are trying to achieve? These may be the metrics by which you can measure success, - Yes - No - Sort of Do you gather any usage metrics about your project - Yes - No - Other: Vision and goals If available please paste your vision and goals in this section or add a link to them GRASS GIS is a complete GIS and Earth Observation suite with focus on analytical functionality. Our goal is to further develop GRASS GIS an an analytical GIS backend with all needed interfaces for a large user base, i.e. Desktop frontend (own interface; QGIS processing), cloud support (docker, actinia, HPC job manager) and a huge set of proven and efficient methods and algorithms. A short term goal is to be fully Python 3 compliant. Roadmap How do you establish and maintain the roadmap for your project? Do you have a roadmap for your project? - None - 1 year - 2 year - 3 year - Other: What methodology do you use to manage your roadmap? These are some of the most common methods for managing a roadmap, do you use one of them? If not please describe how you plan and communicate your roadmap. - Priority Buckets (Now, Next, Later) - Categorize, Cluster and Communicate (e.g. https://library.gv.com/climbing-mount-enterprise-99a4d014f942 <https://www.google.com/url?q=https://library.gv.com/climbing-mount-enterprise-99a4d014f942&sa=D&ust=1559515200860000&usg=AFQjCNHfdQL2KAlrM4v2u-b5OwCndXEebQ> ) - 3 feature buckets (Customer requests, Metrics movers, Customer delight) - No formal process to manage roadmap - Other: Link to your roadmap If you publish a roadmap please provide a link to the current version https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Grass8Planning Feature prioritisation How do you prioritise features within the next release(s) of your project? Sponsored Features To what extent do you prioritise features that are wholly or partly sponsored by users of the software? Does this create any conflicts in terms of feature prioritisation or your roadmap? Please be assured that any responses on sponsored features will be anonymised so that your project and sponsors will not be identified. Since the GRASS GIS development team is an open team there is no strict management or regulations to develop features only upon sponsorship. Indeed, it happens that companies finance feature development which is eventually merged into the master but there is no large budget nor legal body so far to hand out contracts to freelancers. What methodology do you use to prioritise features within your next release? These are some of the most common methods for prioritising features, do you use one of them? If not please describe how you prioritise features. - Kano (Delighters, Satisfiers, Basic Expectations) - MoSCoW (Must, Should, Could, Won't) - Buy a Feature (each team member gets an allocation of points and assign to features) - RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) - No formal process to prioritise features - Other: Requirements Capture How do you capture and document requirements within your project? Requirements How do you identify user requirements - User Stories - Job Stories - Detailed feature descriptions - Surveys - Other: I can't describe our product management process by responding to your questions! This is the pint where you can just write whatever you wish about the product management processes in your project and include answers to the questions that I have neglected to ask! Answering your way Write whatever you wish in this section The fact that feature development has not (yet?) been formalized needs to be seen along with the fact that GRASS GIS is under active development for 35+ years. Just now, in April 2019 we moved to GitHub which offers the possibility of a quite different development model. Probably a bit more formal model may come up but who knows... Innovation is triggered by the needs of the developers (who are mostly strong users of GRASS GIS themselves in all kind of settings, i.e. academia, commercial businesses or others) which may differ from software projects in which many developers don't really use the software. We do a lot of quality control, keep backward compatibility and have an eye on the support of different operating systems. Now, more CI/CD and QA systems are on the way which will further help to keep quality high. The last bit A few questions about the organisation of product management within your project, your analysis of your competitors and your communications with your users. How do product management decisions sit within your project's organisation? Who makes the decisions? - Project Steering Committee - A Product Management sub-committee - The contributors decide - Other: Do you track what your competitors are doing? - Yes - No - We don't have any competitors - Other: How do you track competitor developments? If you are tracking competitor developments how do you do so? If not, can you explain why this is not a consideration in determining the direction of your project? We use the software of competitor as well. Often, when it comes to massive data processing, GRASS GIS frequently outperforms other software packages. Do end users get a say on the roadmap? Do you have a channel for dialogue with your users? How do you reach them and how important is their input in determining your roadmap? Sure, we have mailing lists, issue trackers, talk at conferences and listen and react to comments on social media. Any last thoughts? Anything I haven't asked you that you would like to share Thanks for the interview Create your own Google Form <https://docs.google.com/forms?usp=mail_form_link>
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