On 10/17/2012 10:35 PM, Kevin Grignon wrote:
KG01 - see comments online
On Oct 18, 2012, at 5:24 AM, Kay Schenk <kay.sch...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 10/16/2012 03:40 PM, Rob Weir wrote:
On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 6:06 PM, Kay Schenk <kay.sch...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 10/16/2012 02:47 PM, Rob Weir wrote:
On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 5:29 PM, Kay Schenk <kay.sch...@gmail.com> wrote:
[top posting -- old discussion/business]
I just created a little wiki schematic page based on this discussion at:
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/Project+Management+Roles
which will make it easy for us to add roles, people to roles, etc.
[The second column, intended for actual names, is blank so far.]
I'm not really sure what problem we're solving here.
Better defining activities that we do/need to do.
Hopefully soliciting/inviting individuals to take ownership of some of these
activities.
But we can have a full list of roles on the wiki, but not define a
single task... But maybe this is the first step.
yes...and an oversight in my initial enthusiasm. Obviously, it is difficult to
determine if any list is sufficient unless the roles are defined. :/
One way of making this scale and be more self-maintaining is something like:
1) Work with Infra to create a new issue tracking DB for the project.
Maybe use JIRA rather than BZ. This new DB would be for tracking
tasks, not for tracking bugs. (Why a separate DB? So we don't drive
QA team crazy.)
KG01 - Rob, I like the idea of a new system that supports scope items in
addition to work items. We could benefit from more PPM tooling.
Kevin--
Maybe you could raise this as an additional issue or a separate
discussion item, and explain to the community what you mean by this. I
don't know how many folks involved here know what "PPM tooling" is.
2) In the database we put in all the tasks that we know needs to get
done, from running a RAT scan before a release, to verifying the new
Norwegian translation, to UX exploration tasks, etc. There are
probably 100+ tasks that we could think of, more than would be fun to
track on the wiki.
KG01 - In fact, I'm already in the midst of populating a ux opportunity backlog
as BZ does not serve my business needs.
3) Project members can comment on issues and take ownership of them.
4) If a project member is focused deeply on a specific issue, then
they can set themselves as the default "owner" for that issue
category.
In this way, roles are defined implicitly by what tasks you claim and
what categories you set yourself as the default owner.
KG01 - agreed, less role oriented and more work item oriented.
"work items" pretty much determine role I would think except in some
specialized cases at Apache.
The nice thing about this approach is it helps with the communication
challenges of a large project. None of us can read everything on
every mailing list. But we can all read the JIRA notifications that
come directly to us as an issue owner.
Well this part is certainly true. It's difficult to overlook what you signed up
for, when you get notifications.
Another nice thing about this approach is it lets us set up a backlog
of things that are "nice to do someday" but where we have no
volunteer. For example, spell checking the website, or updating the
Indonesian translation. We don't even have a person in the role of an
Indonesian Translator today. But if the tasks are defined in JIRA
then we can the unassigned tasks as a way to recruit new volunteers.
It makes it easier to see where we need help.
KG01 - backlogs also allow is to create candidate release and iteration plans
I think the JIRA/BZ approach definitely has merit in the long run.
For now, I think it would be advantageous to just flesh out the page a bit more
to supply definitions and see what we're missing in terms of typical
actions/roles that we take on, or should be taken on.
And, although people could indeed "enroll" for tasks right on the page, I'm not
explicitly suggesting that as some categories, for example, developer, would have MANY
entries. However, I do think it is valuable for site visitors to at least identify
mailing list moderators, and maybe BZ, wiki, etc. admins.
For example, if person X is assigned role Y, I assume we don't want to
encourage people to contact person X directly for questions or
assistance. We should do our work on ooo-dev.
I assume we also want to avoid the type of hard-coded roles that
existed with OOo, where the names, personal email addresses and even
phone numbers of community manages, press contacts, etc., were on
hundreds of web pages.
Well these are good points actually.
Yes, we should absolutely continue discussions on ooo-dev. I was thinking of
putting in names for the roles. The "roles" are not "hard" as you suggest
here. We don't hire people and they don't have "official" positions. Maybe
more of a way of providing information both to the outside and (P)PMC.
I suggest keeping this light-weight, non-exclusive, open to all who
are interested, etc.
No problem with that of course. PLEASE self-sign up! This is encouraged!
I was tempted to assign Juergen permanent "release manager" but thought
better of it. :}
So more like "areas of interest" or "contact
point" rather than hard-coded roles.
Well, OK. Still I think explicitly defining roles is good for the project
in some ways. It will show us what types of activities "someone" needs to
take ownership of.
Remember, people do go on
vacation, volunteers come and go, real life intervenes. So we cannot
"assign" someone a role in the same way we can an employee.
Exactly, we need overlap!
Rob referenced the following page as part of this thread:
http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/ppmc-faqs.html#status
Which probably needs updating or ???? Of course, this is one of the items
that needs to go in the "Graduation checklist" just started today as
well.
Note this page as well, which goes in the other direction, mapping
person to area:
http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/people.html
It would suck if we had to track the same information in both places.
Maybe there is a way we can track this in one place?
Maybe add a "role" column to the "people" page? I dunno.
A good idea as well. We could discuss this...I had actually forgotten all
about the "people" page :/. Should we keep using it?
-Rob
On 09/09/2012 11:02 PM, Rob Weir wrote:
On Sep 9, 2012, at 2:51 PM, Kay Schenk <kay.sch...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 09/08/2012 02:15 PM, tj wrote:
On 9/8/2012 13:50, Dave Fisher wrote:
On Sep 7, 2012, at 6:50 AM, Oliver-Rainer Wittmann wrote:
Hi,
I would like to give my thoughts on defining roles for management,
... as the thread "Specific actions needed for developing the
community" tends to become a general one on this topic.
For me we, the AOO community, need to have an idea about the
different roles which need to be fullfilled to drive our project:
- role of developer
- role of forum admin
- role of tester
- role of UX practitioners
- role of release manager
- role of community manager
internal / project(?)
- role of marketing person
external / ecosystem(?)
- role of press contact
- role of distribution manager
- role of buildbot admin
- ...
role of translators (l10n)
role of infrastructure
role of moderators for various MLs
role of Mwiki admin (mostly me, now; help welcome)
role of BZ admin (doing a little of that, just added Dave McKay)
/tj/
From my point of view these are more or less areas of the project
which need to be fullfilled with certain actions and coordination.
What I do not believe is that we need to assign certain individuals
on these roles (*).
I agree with Jürgen that certain individuals will grow their
expertise in a certain role/area and as a contributor will take
action or raise flag due to lack of resources, knowlegde, ...
I think we already had quite a couple of good examples for such a
habit. But, I also have to admit that for certain other roles we did
not yet succeed as we could and should.
And here comes the responsibility of the (P)PMC - its management
duty, if you want. The (P)PMC as a group takes care that the roles
are fullfilled. E.g., by raising a corresponding gap on ooo-dev, by
calling for discussion and volunteers, by leveraging new and/or
established members.
My thoughts are also based on the fact that Apache had only two
roles
in a project to by assigned to a certain individual - the PMC chair
and the release manager.
As pointed out above, I think that we need to work out the need and
the working tasks for certain roles in our project. This work out is
from my point of view a community task which could or may be should
be driven by the current PPMC in order to demonstrate our
self-governance.
This is good. I think that there are four parts in no particular
order. We've done a lot of definition already. This is about
reorganizing and formalizing the arrangement. Some of these teams of
role players will be small and some large.
(1) Defining the role so that any volunteer can know how to start
helping.
(2) Defining who on the (P)PMC will have oversight with the charge of
guiding volunteers and identifying committers. This person should be
a
player-coach and not a manager.
(3) Defining workflow around these roles. Different sets of roles
will
need to work together.
(A) Developing a Release - developer, tester, ux, buildbot.
(B) Building / Passing a Release - buildbot, release, community.
(C) Distributing a Release - distribution, infrastructure,
marketing, press.
(D) Supporting Users - forum, tester, ux, community, marketing.
(4) What infrastructure the role uses.
I think that this should be documented in the incubator website at
least for overview and navigation about project roles. Each group
that
self-organizes around a role should use whatever project resource
makes sense for them.
Regards,
Dave
Best regards, Oliver.
This thread is really tremendous work in my opinion! Both the roles and
the workflow groupings!
Documenting it on the incubator website would be most excellent.
If someone decides to create a new page for this they should be sure
to delete the existing page I created to track admins and moderators:
http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/ppmc-faqs.html#moderator
(or we could just update that page)
Rob
(*) except the ones for the PMC chair and the release manager, of
course, as they are part of the Apache Way.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MzK
"We never sit anything out. We are cups, constantly and quietly
being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and
let the beautiful stuff out."
-- Ray Bradbury, "Zen in the Art of Writing"
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MzK
"Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never
dealt with a cat."
-- Robert Heinlein
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MzK
"Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never
dealt with a cat."
-- Robert Heinlein
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MzK
"Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never
dealt with a cat."
-- Robert Heinlein
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MzK
"Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never
dealt with a cat."
-- Robert Heinlein
