Re: Yet Another communication improvement suggestion
Thank you for all your replies. I was pleased by the positive response so I think it is worth setting something up. Here is my revised proposal. I believe this process will significantly increase visibility for all the project stakeholders with minimal effort. === Proposed status updates process === I will initially act as coordinator, with one or two other people providing cover when I'm unavailable. Every two weeks [1]: - I will create a Status Update 2013-mm-dd wiki page for that period [2] - I will send a mail to the list to prompt people to add their updates to the page as comments. - I will edit the body of the wiki page to summarise the comments [3]. The summary may also contain other interesting events, e.g. releases. - I will mail a link to the wiki page - I will update the roadmap if necessary [4]. The status updates will be one or two sentences describing (with Jira numbers where possible): - What you did - What you are planning to do - Any blockers === Notes === [1] I *think* a two week period is the right frequency, but am open to suggestions. [2] All the status updates will be child pages of an umbrella one, which will be hyperlinked from the main sidebar on the wiki. [3] I appreciate Rafi's concern about funnelling these updates through a single person. However, I don't think we can achieve a sufficiently high quality summary by simply aggregating individual updates. Nevertheless, by storing the raw updates as comments on the same wiki page as the distilled summary, it will be easy for us to tweak this process as we go along. [4] I should not be the only person updating the roadmap. Ad hoc discussions on the list should also trigger roadmap updates, by whoever makes most sense at the time. Let me know what you think. Phil On 14 March 2013 15:44, Rafael Schloming r...@alum.mit.edu wrote: I definitely agree we should make both the longer term roadmap and the things being actively worked on for the next release more visible. One frustration I've had with our communication tools has been with the wiki. I actually had quite a good experience at first. I was happy with how easy it was to author the Protocol Engines doc I wrote a little while back. Since then though I have noticed that it is very difficult to find something once you've authored it. There is no obvious way to navigate to the page when you go here: https://cwiki.apache.org/qpid/, the search box on the top doesn't seem to work well at all, and if you google proton protocol engines you actually get to the mailing list updates for the document but not the document itself. I think any process that somehow distills and summarizes the higher frequency activity from jira/lists/irc, would really need to solve and/or find a better means of publishing the info than we currently have with the wiki. I think we have a general gap in (good) tooling for low frequence/live updated material. Regarding the specific process you mention, I'd be happy to contribute to periodic status/activity updates. I would, however, prefer a more distributed process than funnelling through one person, i.e. put the updates into some kind of shared/concurrently editable thing, e.g. a wiki page or a google doc. --Rafael On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 1:22 PM, Phil Harvey p...@philharveyonline.com wrote: There is a lot of really exciting development being done on Proton at the moment. However, I often wish that I had better visibility of ongoing work, so that I could better complement the work others are doing. Currently, the ways I find out about this work are: - Jira updates - The mailing list - IRC There are two problems with this: (1) I only get a partial view of what's going on, and (2) stuff usually gets put on Jira and the mailing list too late, i.e. when it's already in progress or is actually finished. Also, we do have a roadmap on the wiki [1], but I don't think this is used by many people at the moment. Maybe my desire for more visibility and coordination could be viewed as rather command and control, and therefore not in the spirit of open source. I'd be interested to hear what others think about this. For the record, what I think we should introduce is: 1. A regular round-up email that gets sent to the list. Someone would be responsible for collating brief emails from developers describing what they're planning to work on, and would condense this into something useful to the general Proton community. I would be happy to perform this role. This round-up would necessarily be descriptive, not prescriptive. 2. We would commit to keeping the roadmap more up to date so that it becomes a useful resource for people wishing to work in a complementary way. I believe that most of the above points could apply to the Qpid project as a whole. But, to avoid trying to boil the ocean, I thought it would be worth testing these ideas in the narrower
Re: Yet Another communication improvement suggestion
I definitely agree we should make both the longer term roadmap and the things being actively worked on for the next release more visible. One frustration I've had with our communication tools has been with the wiki. I actually had quite a good experience at first. I was happy with how easy it was to author the Protocol Engines doc I wrote a little while back. Since then though I have noticed that it is very difficult to find something once you've authored it. There is no obvious way to navigate to the page when you go here: https://cwiki.apache.org/qpid/, the search box on the top doesn't seem to work well at all, and if you google proton protocol engines you actually get to the mailing list updates for the document but not the document itself. I think any process that somehow distills and summarizes the higher frequency activity from jira/lists/irc, would really need to solve and/or find a better means of publishing the info than we currently have with the wiki. I think we have a general gap in (good) tooling for low frequence/live updated material. Regarding the specific process you mention, I'd be happy to contribute to periodic status/activity updates. I would, however, prefer a more distributed process than funnelling through one person, i.e. put the updates into some kind of shared/concurrently editable thing, e.g. a wiki page or a google doc. --Rafael On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 1:22 PM, Phil Harvey p...@philharveyonline.comwrote: There is a lot of really exciting development being done on Proton at the moment. However, I often wish that I had better visibility of ongoing work, so that I could better complement the work others are doing. Currently, the ways I find out about this work are: - Jira updates - The mailing list - IRC There are two problems with this: (1) I only get a partial view of what's going on, and (2) stuff usually gets put on Jira and the mailing list too late, i.e. when it's already in progress or is actually finished. Also, we do have a roadmap on the wiki [1], but I don't think this is used by many people at the moment. Maybe my desire for more visibility and coordination could be viewed as rather command and control, and therefore not in the spirit of open source. I'd be interested to hear what others think about this. For the record, what I think we should introduce is: 1. A regular round-up email that gets sent to the list. Someone would be responsible for collating brief emails from developers describing what they're planning to work on, and would condense this into something useful to the general Proton community. I would be happy to perform this role. This round-up would necessarily be descriptive, not prescriptive. 2. We would commit to keeping the roadmap more up to date so that it becomes a useful resource for people wishing to work in a complementary way. I believe that most of the above points could apply to the Qpid project as a whole. But, to avoid trying to boil the ocean, I thought it would be worth testing these ideas in the narrower Proton domain first. Phil [1] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/qpid/AMQP+1.0+Roadmap
Re: Yet Another communication improvement suggestion
Hi Phil, I'm certainly guilty of not making my status and plans as visible as they should be. And I'd like a better understanding of what's under development (or planned) so to better manage my own contributions. I have no problem sending periodic updates to the list, but I suspect I'll slack off at some point. My discipline isn't what it really should be, just ask my boss... However, I think the roadmap on the wiki should be utilized more than it is. Perhaps prior to each release it should be updated with jiras created for each deliverable? That alone would give a better understanding of who is responsible for what in the near term. -K - Original Message - From: Phil Harvey p...@philharveyonline.com To: proton@qpid.apache.org Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2013 1:22:37 PM Subject: Yet Another communication improvement suggestion There is a lot of really exciting development being done on Proton at the moment. However, I often wish that I had better visibility of ongoing work, so that I could better complement the work others are doing. Currently, the ways I find out about this work are: - Jira updates - The mailing list - IRC There are two problems with this: (1) I only get a partial view of what's going on, and (2) stuff usually gets put on Jira and the mailing list too late, i.e. when it's already in progress or is actually finished. Also, we do have a roadmap on the wiki [1], but I don't think this is used by many people at the moment. Maybe my desire for more visibility and coordination could be viewed as rather command and control, and therefore not in the spirit of open source. I'd be interested to hear what others think about this. For the record, what I think we should introduce is: 1. A regular round-up email that gets sent to the list. Someone would be responsible for collating brief emails from developers describing what they're planning to work on, and would condense this into something useful to the general Proton community. I would be happy to perform this role. This round-up would necessarily be descriptive, not prescriptive. 2. We would commit to keeping the roadmap more up to date so that it becomes a useful resource for people wishing to work in a complementary way. I believe that most of the above points could apply to the Qpid project as a whole. But, to avoid trying to boil the ocean, I thought it would be worth testing these ideas in the narrower Proton domain first. Phil [1] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/qpid/AMQP+1.0+Roadmap -- -K
Re: Yet Another communication improvement suggestion
Phil, I don't think what you suggested is against the spirit of open source. As a project we certainly need to think about how to better communicate among us and also with our user base. A number of users have voiced their concerns about not knowing major changes and plans in a timely manner. We could ask the developers to send an email with, 1. A brief summary of what they are planing to do in the short term. 2. Expected start and end dates (a rough estimation) 3. Any JIRA's associated with the work .. we can update as we go along And then one person (Sir, looks like you volunteered) can collect these summaries into a wiki page of some sort. (Ideally each contributor should do this themselves, but chances are that it will not happen, so we need a few folks to drive this). We should also email a summary of this page to our user list every two weeks or so. This can also be used as a basis for our quarterly reports. Regards, Rajith On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 1:22 PM, Phil Harvey p...@philharveyonline.com wrote: There is a lot of really exciting development being done on Proton at the moment. However, I often wish that I had better visibility of ongoing work, so that I could better complement the work others are doing. Currently, the ways I find out about this work are: - Jira updates - The mailing list - IRC There are two problems with this: (1) I only get a partial view of what's going on, and (2) stuff usually gets put on Jira and the mailing list too late, i.e. when it's already in progress or is actually finished. Also, we do have a roadmap on the wiki [1], but I don't think this is used by many people at the moment. Maybe my desire for more visibility and coordination could be viewed as rather command and control, and therefore not in the spirit of open source. I'd be interested to hear what others think about this. For the record, what I think we should introduce is: 1. A regular round-up email that gets sent to the list. Someone would be responsible for collating brief emails from developers describing what they're planning to work on, and would condense this into something useful to the general Proton community. I would be happy to perform this role. This round-up would necessarily be descriptive, not prescriptive. 2. We would commit to keeping the roadmap more up to date so that it becomes a useful resource for people wishing to work in a complementary way. I believe that most of the above points could apply to the Qpid project as a whole. But, to avoid trying to boil the ocean, I thought it would be worth testing these ideas in the narrower Proton domain first. Phil [1] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/qpid/AMQP+1.0+Roadmap
