2010-03-16 Incubation vs. Product Development meeting

Owned by Former user (Deleted)
Last updated: Mar 24, 2010Version comment
2 min read

On 2010-03-16, Michael Feldstein and Noah Botimer had a call about the Incubation to Product Development transition. It was agreed that the whole problem is too large to tackle now. We focused on the topic of an initial, small scale release of Sakai 3.

We discussed the following questions with the accompanying tentative conclusions.

What does entry to Product Development mean? What should be documented as input to the transition?

  • What the project/release is trying to accomplish (use/business case)
  • High level functional requirements as understood to meet the use/business case
  • High level QA and documentation plans (types of docs and QA intended to be provided)
  • A rough plan to accomplish the goals
  • Information on non-functional requirements (e.g., scalability, usability, accessibility, localization) to be considered and how they would be addressed
  • Indicated resources to execute the plan, including representation from three institutions

What is the value of entering Product Development?

  • Help in formulating a plan that will inform the community in a consistent way
  • Itemization of areas of strength and need
  • More likelihood of additional contributors due to clarity of direction

Additionally, we understand or suspect the following:

  • "Sakai 3" is in Incubation, but what that means is somewhat unclear.
  • The Sakai 3 team would like to enter Product Development, but needs a clearer definition of the expectations.
  • Process documentation needs clarity about what a "Sakai release" is (how many? how defined? following which processes?).
  • The Product Council needs to talk with the six first-round projects; what worked/helped/didn't?
  • The Product Council needs to provide specific requests for the above documentation in more detail.

Individual perspectives:

  • NB - Product Council needs to ask Sakai 3 project team how they see Product Development and what they think should be provided to be there.
  • NB - The contrib ecosystem absolutely must be revamped to be healthy and relax process complexity.